Dance of Shadows
by Ganimyde
Summary: He has to fight both his Innocence and his broken flesh to survive the aftermath of the Level 4 and its attack on headquarters....And everyone else that wants to take their turn with him. 1st part: Allen-centric; 2nd: Link-centric.
1. The Light and the Darkness

**D. Gray-Man: _Dance of Shadows_**

**Rating: PG-13 **(violence, trauma, pain.)

**Summary** **and Spoilers**: This is a writing of the aftermath of the Level 4 fight in the manga, though it applies to anime-verse as well. It partly originated to explain where everyone was in relation to Allen such that several of the generals just left his sorry behind against a pole, when, obviously, Lenalee can't lift him. Seriously, what? For spoilers, there is "Battle with the Level 4" and after. If you haven't gotten that far, you won't understand any of what this is about. D:

**Genre:**"Gore"? It's a description-fest that makes you hurt. In a good way. I'm working on putting more vivid, haunting imagery in my stories. Let's see how it goes. :)

**It should be known that it is Allen's pov we're following. That is not quite clear at the beginning, but now you know. You'll do just fine. He won't.**

Also, sorry for the first line. I know it's a bit...often seen...around the fandom, but it's actually making a legitimate analogy this time. ;) The intro (and the rest of the story) overall is supposed to make you feel spacey, dreamy, like just as you fall asleep or wake up. Listen to the words gently; most of the time, they are not supposed to be sharp and jarring as you read. Try to float on the currents of syllables and breathy emotion as you read. I hope someone knows what the hell I'm talking about. xD

_Ah yes, and I do not own D. gray-man and __I do not make any money from this work. Now, to the main event, ladies and gentlemen assembled for the lovely Circus of Hell!_

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* * *

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**D. Gray-Man:**

**_Dance of Shadows_**

It was just like that night, so many years ago, now. He could barely breathe, and even though he couldn't make himself move, there was an uncontrollable shaking. It was the loss of adrenaline, pouring out like his blood was, that was leaving a creaking body in its wake.

At first, he hadn't been cognizant of any pain. In some way, he had been dreaming of his Innocence while it drove his body around—a simple sensation of white light and slight blue floating before his eyes, and, occasionally, an understanding of swirling around the heavens. Sometime in the middle of this gentle dream he had awoken, and realized he was fighting—his heart in his ears, the warm thrum of blood and Innocence saccharine to his limbs as he engaged his prey, and it, him.

There were no questions as to how or why. The missing time didn't come until some time after, when his brain was weaving a plan and it suddenly realized it didn't know how he had gotten from a vision of a molten floor that was once the lab to the starry sky above Hebraska's chambers. But to his thoughts, his Innocence soothed away his cares, and whispered to him, merely:

_Fight_.

Sometimes when behind the mask, all he could see was brilliant, sentient white that cacooned him in warmth, that made his heart sing. At such times, he couldn't feel anything, and he didn't want to. Times like that—times like this—he trusted his Innocence would save him. He didn't bother to figure out what it had done while he wasn't there. For all he knew, it kept him alive.

Little by little, feeling crept in. When Linalee carried him into the sky, nasea hit where she held him: bruises so deep he felt them out the other side abruptly came to be to his mind, and there was something in his ribs, he realized, that was crushed.

When he took his hand away from his mouth, red soaked into the Innocence-white gloves.

It didn't register that it could have been his own. He had an akuma to defeat. Maybe it was its. Certainly it wasn't Lenalee's; he wouldn't let that happen—

His hand slipped from the sword hilt when the akuma was finally gone. A sigh, a release. . . .

A tiny ache. . . .

And then his arm reformed into its clawed state; he distantly recognized his head tipping back and not feeling his legs at all. Somehow he was standing, though it was like the bottom half of him was made of concrete. There were no images from around him, either—rather, there were pinpricks of color dancing before a curtain of white, cross-signals filtering into his brain as the particles of Innocence wove back into being with his body.

When it had first happened, it may have been concerning perhaps, but there was a familiarity to it now, and it made him smile a loopy grin: He felt like he knew each sparkle by name. He waited for every particular blip expectantly, for each was his Innocence, a cell of his own arm, and they sung to him as each took back its proper place.

He knew he sighed happily, a strangely wet sound. A bloom of liquid in his lungs, a twinge of pain . . . but only for a second. His Innocence went to the site of the intrusion, pooled around it and erased its line to his brain; and then, it drew his attention away. There was a slight ache, as droplets of something slid down the side of his head. But Crown Clown was there for him, as it always was: It whispered him away, and he didn't feel a thing.

What he noticed next was a walkway. Disrupted stone, under his feet. He stopped, ages going by as he tried to think, and then he glanced around. He didn't see anyone, though he only saw what was directly in front of him. He couldn't hear, not even his heart—there was just plain nothing, so he figured everything must be fine. He took his time, considering the next step.

_Lenalee. Oh . . . the others. . . ._

There still people out there. He had to help them—

His stomach was starting to jab at him though, a shivering that made his legs weak. It was starting to pulse, that weakness, and he didn't like it. His friends needed him, but he wouldn't be able to get there at this rate. . . . He wouldn't even be of help if he _could _get there. There were liquid cold spots appearing all over his body that flitted away as quickly as they came, and his consciousness chased after them to no avail.

Allen took a breath, tipping back his head. The ceiling was dark, with prickly lights swimming in it—was he in the basement? It seemed like there was no way out. He might pass out before he found a way —

He coughed, and it felt like metal bouncing around the confines of his lungs. There came a ripple of weakness, followed by blooming heat, spreading from the center of the fluid in his chest. Something came out, warm and bitter.

It took him several long moments to regain enough air to consider what to do. _Sit_, he decided eventually, staring at the broken floor like a craving. _Lie down. Don't feel good. . . ._

_

* * *

  
_

"Hey," Zokaro grunted, tipping his chin downwards.

"Hm?" the lovely Cloud responded to him, following his line of sight. A story or two below them, a little white figure hobbled along the balcony, stopping every so often and swaying in place. "His legs look broken," she murmured.

"You should go help," Zokoro grunted, a grin pealing across his face. "It'll improve his circulation."

"We need to make sure Marian doesn't get his stupid ass killed. Lenalee," she called, not missing a beat. The girl was standing on the closed shutters, just staring at the crack. It took several calls of her name, but she finally looked up, breathless and tearful.

"We need to make sure the akuma's controlled. Help _him_," Cloud said, pointing.

The girl followed the line of her finger, and thankfully, didn't scream.

* * *

There was a nice dark space nearby; this much he could tell. Well, everything he saw was mostly dark, aside from a growing glow around the edges. It threatened to wash out everything.

But there was a pain pushing that white back.

His Innocence was talking to him. It wanted safety for him. It didn't use words, necessarily, but an understanding. This particular time, it was warmth and sound vibrations through which it communicated. It was lulling him to sleep in a fog, to the sound of rolling waves; as soon as he let himself into it, he felt like he was falling. . . .

But there was something it was shielding him against, he understood, every time his consciousness popped back above the gentle, heavy waves. And the last time his Innocence shielded him from knowing he was drowning in his own blood, he had come a hair's breadth from never coming back.

He listened, into the whiteness, to catch whatever the Innocence was enshrouding from his nerves.

It was holding him up. The Clown Belt was wound snugly around his middle, spooled tightly down his throbbing legs and arms, and even gently curved about his neck--

—It was holding his head in place. There was something so wrong with him that he couldn't hold his own head up? That . . . was too serious to ignore.

_Let . . . me _go_. . . ,_ he thought eventually, holding his hand out toward the ground that was coming at him.

He hit it; a sharp burst of needles in his ribcage that just as quickly were whispered away. However, he saw him chest gasping for air as he lay on his side, even though he could not feel nor hear the movements.

_Please, let me . . . Go. . . . I need . . . to . . . them . . . !_

His heart was beating painfully fast. It was hot, it hurt; . . . He couldn't _breathe_. . . .

He curled around his chest, his hands coming up to clutch at broken skin. Perhaps because he would have stabbed himself in the process, the spikes dissolved from his hand, Innocence unraveling up his arm until the farthest reaches of deformed black skin.

It tingled there, but his heart _hurt_; he moaned, and it turned into a high-pitched creen that wheedled out into the air. He pressed his head into the floor, wishing for coolness, praying that it would help—but it only worsened. His breath caught on fluid, and he found himself hacking up more warm, wet liquid.

A rush of heat bloomed in his flushed face, down through his neck and into his chest and arms. He was suddenly burning as he choked, and he couldn't get away from it. Miserable and unable to breathe, he put as much skin as he could against the granite tile and just lie there, closing his lungs and grasping at nothing while doing so. He reached as if there could be something to anchor him to the living world, when all he could see was his life draining out into the polished black horizon.

He was swimming again, colors dancing before his eyes and the shine in the floor. His Innocence reclaimed its ground, laying a muting blanket over him, through him. He thought vaguely of those important to him; of those whom he still had to help, yet did not know; if the akuma was broken. . . . But nothing would stay, other than the twisting worry that everyone he knew might be dead. And that soon, he would join them.

His Innocence thrummed, suddenly, whisking through his chest, his torso, and then crawling down his back. When it captured his head, it was impossible to think. He recognized this action, though—it was forcing him to sleep.

He pleaded with it, but it refused. He reached out his shaking, bloodied arm to a particularly shiny sparkle on the floor, focusing his consiousness on it. He needed to _think_, he needed to _know, _he needed to _help the others_. . . _!_

But it was too late. His arm stopped moving, despite the message he sent.

_Oh, Crown . . . , _he lamented into the white space that suddenly claimed everything he saw, _Even you can't move me now?_

He sighed, and listened for the inevitable pain of air cooling the blood that coated his broken fingers. There was none.

Just light.

_Don't let me die._ _I still have things I need to do._

_ . . . Please?_

He closed his eyes, just to blink, but the whiteness took its final hold. The world dropped out from under him, and for perhaps the last time, his consciousness was gone.

* * *

The new Darkboots didn't have the sound of the old ones. They clicked when they should've clacked, they flew when they should have run, and when she crested the final pillar, nothing there was right, either.

"Allen! _Allen_!" she called, her pale face bright with pink. "Allen. Oh God help us, Allen...." Hovering over his face, she smoothed over his matted hair and whispered gentle reassurances, in the guise of being to him. Just as little Timcampy zipped over her head, she grabbed the boy around the shoulders and, using her knee as support for his back, pulled his upper half upright. The gurgling sound in his throat stopped, changing to short coughs instead.

"Allen. Allen?" His head flopped into the crook of her elbow. He was surprisingly heavy, too heavy to lift. Dipping her face down below his eyes, she spread her hand across his chest, under ruined fabric. His heart beat under hers, fast, erratic, and fluttering; his chest heaved sporatically. Lenalee drew her hand back, only to find it . . . cold.

Her palm was coated in a thin layer of sticky blood, quickly congealing in the air.

Allen coughed; she looked at his face, just in time to see blood bubbling out of his mouth.

"Al...lennn," she pleaded, shifting around to prop him against the large stone pillar they were in front of. He stayed against the collumn when Lenalee let him go, but it was only because he did not move. He simply lay there, like a badly played doll with severed strings.

She stared. The generals were gone; she couldn't carry him; she could try to shake him awake, but what then? What would that help? She had to leave him, but . . . what if . . . by then?—

"No, no; Allen, hang on. Don't die! Please don't die, I'll get help! I'll—" She pushed back tears that made it hard to see, and then smoothed over the side of his head. "I'll be right back, okay."

"Le . . . 'nleh. . . ." As she pulled her hand away, the slightest bit of eye cracked open. The light had subsided a little: the white had pulled back, and apparently this girl's shadow had been why.

She looked straight at him, startled. It was not a look he liked on her, and he certainly didn't want to be the cause.

He wanted to ask her what was happening. The Order's people. Hers, really. She liked them. They didn't necessarily all like him. She would care; she would know. He had ceased all feeling long ago, but speaking took energy he could not muster. He frowned, and to Lenalee, it look aggreived.

She should go see them, make sure they were all right. He would be fine: he always was. He had his Innocence with him, after all.

But, even if he _were _to expire . . . well, he didn't want her to see it. The men should take care of the bodies. Speaking of men, she should go be with someone that was functionable. Like Komui, or Reever. People. Even though it might be a little lonely in the meantime. . . .

But this was him they were talking about. He should die alone, same way he was born. He'd pretty much planned on it.

"G-oh . . . frie-hennd-s," he sounded out, but her tears only got heavier, to his limited capacity for frustration. She sat on her knees, crying in between his ruined legs. Allen forced his eyes shut, annoyed at himself, and then opened them again, trying anew. He wanted to smile. Had no idea if he could. "'M . . . fihhne. Friends . . . mih' die. You . . . shood go . . . t' thum. 'Fore . . . can't."

He sucked in a breath, wet and clogged. No matter how much air he swallowed, he was dizzy. His head rolled a little closer to her, and . . . there!—the smile managed to make it with the momentum. She never could resist those, he reasoned. She couldn't but leave now!

"'M . . . fine. Tim," he said, by way of explaination. "—'s here."

"No, Allen, no! You listen to me." Her fingers wrapped into his shirt collar and she didn't speak until he looked into her eyes. The black circles were darting back and forth quite quickly, he thought. It was dizzying.

"—you to die. . . .alive, Allen. —tay alive."

"Hm, hm," he said to placate her. He had no idea if it actually made syllables. It was supposed to speak volumes, but she would understand: He did.

"Here." She crouched into him, and tried to shift his abdomen over her shoulder. There was some rocking and moving and such, until Allen found himself back on the ground again, staring up at the ceiling, and then Lenalee's face came into view again.

He wasn't sure where she had gone, but it was nice to see her again. It was always good to see Lenalee—

"Dammit, Allen, why are you so heavy?" She was starting to cry again. She rubbed her arm over her eyes, and then one palm. The other was pressed against his stomach. He could barely feel the pressure. She was soft, though.

"—llen. _Allen,"_ she vowed, gripping his shoulder and then pulling him into a sitting position against something cold and stone. "Here, just stay here," she said. She seemed awfully concerened for just leaving for a while. Allen made a small huffing noise at her, conveying his disbelief at her distress.

"'M fihne . . ."

"Yes, Allen, you're just fine. . . ." She rubbed her eyes, turned away. The grip on his shoulder tightened, though. Her head turned back with disorienting speed; she gripped his arm and ducked down against his face. A light peck should have prickled his cheek, and then she nearly jumped to her feet. He hadn't felt a bit of it; he just stared in wonder at the fact that she could move. Had she always been able to move like that?

"I'll be back, Allen. I'll get a doctor. Just hang on, okay, you're not going to die. I'll never forgive you if you do. . . ." It turned into a question at "do".

"'U should go, Len'lee...'ve been here lohn'er than me, so..." he sighed, unable to catch his breath. He had the distinct feeling physical objects were exiting his mouth along with his words. It was weird. "Wanna see 'em, yeh? Go. 'm fihn. . . ."

_I'll die by myself. I do that a lot. No worries._

She didn't say anything for a very long time. Allen saw her grip Timcampy's squishy shell hard until she mumbled something sad and hushed, and then she was running down the hall. Allen sighed at the sudden empty space, and let his chin slump against his collar. It felt much better, to have his hands laid out on the ground like this, palm-up at his sides.

It felt good, though, all of it, he thought as his glazed stare drifted over his shoes. It was warm. There was no pain. Just an awful tiredness that was grinding on his nerves and the realization that he couldn't move.

Allen sighed, staring at Timcampy as the golem fluttered down on to his knee. "Just you and me, Tim," he thought, thinking he said it. Tim's tail tapped against his leg in what he assumed was appreciation, beating to a slow, unsung rhythm.

Allen took a deep breath, eyebrows furrowing at the heaviness when he tried to expand his chest. It tickled his throat and he coughed out something that reduced the weight for a while, but it left him exhausted. His stale gaze rested in between his knees, but it wasn't until Timcampy bit his kneecap some time later that he realized he was still conscious.

But . . . He frowned. Timcampy was strangely dull and pale; made in blurry shades of gray; beyond him, a wall of formless black. Even all the times that he passed out without his master and only Tim in his spinning vision, it hadn't been like this. Allen tried to focus on the golem, but his eyes did not obey his commands. Like an unseen had was moving them, they wavered the opposite direction, to a grainy, dark line hovering just beyond the far end of his feet. It swished like fabric, and Allen blinked hard at it. But his eyes, again, moved on their own as soon as the shadow moved again.

The world was darkening. The sound of his Innocence was gone, replaced by an amazingly frightening nothing. Just . . . nothing, not even ringing in his ears nor blood rushing through them. His eyes pulled up, up, up and up, until they rested on a shape looming above him. Two grey-white irises in a head of swirling black lines locked on his, and then steadily leaned nearer.

Big, closer . . . gaining on him like the moon.

"_You_. . . ." Allen breathed at it, a curse to keep it at bay.

It tipped its head. Then it grinned, a cracked, cursed smile, glowed mily like its eyes. One black, boney hand appeared in the shadows, descending on Allen's eyes.

"_Mine_."

"Walker!"

Several bones jarred against each other at odd angles when Allen's jump, torn muscles moving like jelly around them and he did, undeniably, feel it. Before even chasing after the voice, Allen gaped with gritted teeth at the place the dark figure had been.

Against the sound of his breathing, it was still quiet, it was still dark . . . and the shadow was gone.

A sharp tickle caught his lung and hack until he could not catch his breath; his chin fell against his shoulder even as the spasm continued. He was cold, so very cold, and as he shivered, pain and sleep demanded their hold. But there was no presence of his Innocence at all. Just Timcampy, sitting upon his knee.

"Lnlee?" he asked. "That you?" He wondered if he said it.

Why did she have to come back? There were more important things than him. Didn't anyone ever understand that?

"Go . . . the others. You've . . . been here lon'er than me, so... 'm sure...." He sighed, his lungs crushingly heavy, even as the figure to the side came down next to him. A person with bright blond hair, that could in no way be the man waiting beyond his reflection.

He slid over the blond's shoulder, and he still had no idea why they were still trying to save him.

"'S okay, really. I've got Tim and my shadow to watch over me."

* * *

*****

Afterword:

_+This is the first Dgray fic I've uploaded. It won the battle of, "who got done first." I think it turned out all right! :)  
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_+There were originally three short fics that were all back-to-back in timeline, so I decided to stick them together to make Dance of Shadows. There may be a part 4 and 5 now, too. Please enjoy all the chapters of the story. ^__^  
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_+Also: thanks for reading, and review if you have something nice to say, or glaring suggestions. I live to hear people's reactions--"This line [inserted here] made my heart beat way too fast!" "This line is so great; don't change it!". It's enjoy the fangirling if you can put it into words. :3 It's also totally acceptable to ask questions--"I didn't understand this part D:". I like answering questions. :3  
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_**Last edited**: 1/10 :D (I substantially edited the writing to be less passive, have better word choice, and less extraneous words and "stage direction." I added to Allen's big paragraph of delusional thoughts with Lenalee, and clarified a bunch of stuff both at the beginning("flying around" part) and end ("with shadow" part). It's much, much better now, in my opinion :D ).  
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	2. The Black and the White

_Dance of Shadows_ Part II: _The Black and the White_

* * *

He was sitting in a stark shadow, just one of a hundred that draped across the stone walkway in perfect, endless symmetry. Link moved across the floor with quick, silent steps, in and out of the rippling lances of moon and dark, perfect and well-planned, like everything about this castle except its people. The air was cold from the open roof, and the clean, slightly electric scent of Innocence drifted as he moved through the battlefield.

Darkness brought itself to bear yet again, and he cloaked himself in its heavy embrace to survey the newest stretch of hallway for an ambush. Midnight had become his element, but not by choice. It was conditioned, it was home . . . and it was where the other creatures like him lived.

An eternity of shadows ahead of him, a labyrinth growing behind, and then, shapes appeared within the farthest shadow. Several patches of floating grey and one harsh wedge of white....That would be Walker. But, he found when he came closer, he did not move. He lay against the massive pillar like just another corpse on the pile.

Someone had put him there, specifically like _that_. And if it had been Walker himself. . . . Well, sometimes the creepy things Walker did had nothing to do with Walker himself.

Link drew up short, gauging the only visible parts beyond the flare of moonlight: Allen's shirt, his tie, his hair. The inspector took a breath, and wondered why he had been in such a hurry to get out of the burning graveyard that was the lab for this one, lone, burial-site in the heavens.

"Walker!"

And why _he _was the one to do it.

The body did not move. Link couldn't make out breathing. But as he came closer, he thought there was . . . _muttering_?

He edged into Walker's dark shelter, tiptoed around the feet, and checked the other side of the curving hallway. When he was sure the atrium beyond them was clear as well, he turned back to the exorcist.

The golem was sitting faithfully on Allen's knee; it wavered slightly as it so intently fixed itself in place. Truthfully, _it_ was the only reason Link was willing to go anywhere near the boy: it was the one thing an akuma would not be able to reproduce. And if it was any particular evil, playing dead . . . Timcampy wouldn't have stuck around for that, either.

"Walker?" he asked, reaching for his wrist.

There was more breathless mumbling, that ended in something like "'Oo're yu?"

Link draped him over his shoulder, and then pulled his mismatched arms around his neck. He was warm; his flesh depressed like real skin should.

"Howard Link," he replied crisply, getting an arm around one of Allen's thighs while he held the boy's wrists in place. The kid was breathing hard against his back, and it was difficult to ignore.

"..._Chink_?" Allen groaned at him. He _sounded _like he'd just gotten the beating of his life, like cells were breaking down. Link lifted to his feet and secured Allen's other leg; the youth himself tumbled against his back like a ragdoll. He was light—the metabolic effects of being a parasytic user? Link let out a grateful breath at his windfall—he had dragged for miles dismembered corpses heavier than Allen's dead weight, and it made the fifteen flights of stairs ahead of them a little less daunting.

As he walked, he continually surveyed the curving black and silver ahead of him; Allen made confused, listless noises; and Timcampy worried at the side of his vision. It was a lot to take in, a lot to shut out, and suddenly, came a voice groaning into his collarbone: "W-urz Len'lee?"

"I took her there," he said, an instantaneous and easy lie to calm; he pushed the exorcist higher up his back, so that the fragile weight was properly on his shoulders. The boy, however, he could feel hesitating.

"And . . . the others?"

Not "the Ark." Not, "The Akuma?" Not something incriminating in the slightest. Firstly, a _girl_, and then, the closest thing Allen Walker could construe as a family. Nothing evil. Just the dangerous diversions from the True Path any man.

"From before? The lab?" Link clarified, though his mouth twisted down into a grim line. One foot in front of the other. No need in this case to give into the instinctive fear of having something weighing him down, something cutting off his chances of escape. Nothing was going to come after him, nothing was going to attack him.... Probably.

"They're fine," Link continued, to placate the boy and the silence around them. He couldn't keep his eyes from shifting around, though. "General Tiedoll and the Time Exorcist kept the remaining alive. The skulls that were left behind, some of them have already turned into sand. It can be assumed that the others soon will follow." It wasn't pleasant, but it was the truth. And truth was freedom. Especially when dealing with Suspects.

His nerves prickled at the reminder, not that he needed it. Allen had a way of lulling a person into complacency, a feeling of safety and calm that set a person like Link on edge every time a wave of it came at him. Currently, as the glowing curve of the stairs came into view, his nerves refreshed the slight changes in pressure of Allen's arms and legs, just in case he had decided to use the opportunity against him.

A shift of muscles, and then, the boy's head came into the side of his vision, white and stringy. Some of it was tinged with blood; in the back of his mind, Link wondered if it came out of Allen's pigmentless hair any better than his own. Against his skin, the boy shook as he breathed; it was getting bad enough to make Link's own lungs rattle, through his back. The kid was weakening fast—

Allen's left arm came up. There was no attack, no long dreamed-of ambush. Only. . . a stifled sobbing in his ear.

Link sighed and entered the ancient stairwell. Crying. About fear and pain, and the release of adrenaline.

It was a closely-decided battle, and an exorcist was crying on his shoulder.

Well, it certainly wasn't the greatest confidence he had been given by someone he'd ended up killing.

* * *

What had turned into the triage floor was chaotic. There was an entire corridor of bloodied, wounded men in previously-white labcoats lying dead or in some way unconscious. The doctors were a little further down, patching up people that were dropped in front of them or had otherwise collapsed nearby, missing substantial parts of themselves and wishing they _were_ unconscious.

From the screams and frustrated shouts, Link could tell the make-shift operating room was through the doors ahead—what had been the cafeteria.

Unnoticed to this point—doctors in the hall hoping his passing shadow was not to deposit another body on them, and other personnel too busy to doublecheck him and his carry-on—Link ducked into the cafeteria's nearest open door to spy the first passing attendant.

The tables were surrounded by small clumps of dirted surgeons, several finders to each, who were holding gaping wounds closed, exchanging trays of medical instruments, or taking tools and even kitchen knives to be sterilized.

Near the back of the vast middle aisle, Link's black boots came to stand in a wide, ominously wet series of blood pools streaking across the tile. He stood there, blocking out the sounds of the place, until he finally spotted an opening.

The blood coating the thick soles of his shoes was from a table nearby. The thing and its benches were draped in shades of red and pink, but there was a wiped-down space on the empty top easily the size of Walker.

Link dropped the body on the table. Moving to the open side, he pulled off his gloves and tucked them away while the startled doctor and his two bloody triage runners stared.

"Here's the thing," Link announced, stripping off his jacket and the several layers under it until he was down to nothing but a white cotton shirt. It would soon not be so prestine, he knew, but they didn't need to see his scars.

As the doctors watched, Link deftly unwound the ties around the switchblade on his right arm, tucked his various clothing around it and then gracefully tossed the whole lot into a clean spot against the wall.

"_That_," he continued, pointing to Allen before starting to tie up his braid with several pins stashes along the rim of his boot, "is an exorcist. It is essential that he not _die._

"And _this_," he added, finishing with his hair and swiftly punching a fist into said exorcist's diaphragm, resulting in a mouthful of blood spraying onto the doctor and his nearer attendant, "is a problem."

Without taking his eyes off the aghast surgeon, he pinned Allen down to the table with one hand in response to his abrupt gasping and offered up the other to the doctor's startled face. Link forced a smile.

"The Central Administration would be appreciative of your applying yourselves to this matter. Now: which wounds would you like me to hold?"

* * *

After the hours of shouting and fuzzy calls for supplies, available hands, and missing persons over the black golem's radio there came a sudden, clear voice.

"This is Superviosor Lee. I officially request all able and available hands to assemble in the front lobby for assignment of duties. I repeat, we will be taking a headcount of all able bodies, so please assemble immediately in the main lobby of the tower if you are fit for duties and currently have none. Section supervisors, this will be a preliminary account of members, so please send a representative with numbers if you are unable if at all possible. Exorcists, please report in through comms after this message has ended. Over."

Link shrugged the sweat off his brow with his shoulder, and gave the flouncing bat a long look. A fleet of them had entered the room some time ago—looking for people, he had thought, but perhaps this was the reason. Regardless, with where he had his hands, he couldn't really answer. They wouldn't really _want _his answer, either.

_"This is Lavi,"_ came the first response after nearly a minute, patchy and soft. It made Link suspicious of where exactly he was broadcasting from. _"I've got the old man with me, but I'm mostly fine, so I'll come down. . . ."_

He tried to fake chipper at the end, if just out of habit, but it didn't quite work. There was an unignorable quantity of unsurity—fear—in the promise. His voice was strangely deep when he did that . . . the familiarity of it rumbled around Link's mind like a blurry dream.

But, Bookman was forcing Lavi's hand. Lavi was much more a child than a soldier. Note taken.

_"Roger that. Thank you, Lavi,"_ Komui replied.

_"...Roger."_

On the tail of Lavi's youthful and indecisive voice came another, rich, deep, and of a more rumbling tone. _"This is Marie. I'm still with Miranda. She's exhausted but we're both unharmed. Would you like us both to come?"_

There was a pause on the comm link; the yell from an amputation somewhere across the room; and then: _"There's nothing more she can do, anyway. Drop her off at the infirmary with the head nurse and come yourself. If she releases Miranda_—_actually, is Miranda there?"_

_"Ah_—_! Ah, yes, I'm here . . . ," _came a little voice. Marked with the absolutely terrified and yet dying-to-please female voice that was the Time Woman's. It sounded like she was shouting up to the thing; it was probably hovering at Marie's level. Link had to wonder if they had untangled from each other yet, or if they continued to hold so improprietessly close together like they had been before—

_"Miranda, once you're given a clean bill, come find me."_

His voice softened there, Link noted, reassessing the pressure of his hands as the doctor pulled a pliers away from between his fingers.

_"Roger that," _Marie answered, and, on its heels, eager and slightly too delayed, a flustered call of the same from Miranda.

The line went back to static for a while, but was not at all comforting. It was waiting time. What each person was waiting to hear, though, he wondered about.

The doctor hummed in concentration as he pulled another stitch closed. Both of them leaned a little closer.

_". . . Anyone else?" _Komui's voice returned into the empty space after a few tight minutes. It was obvious that there was one specific answer he did not want to hear. Or rather, _not _hear.

He had to know everyone else was listening. The poor bastard.

_"Hold your horses, Komui," _came another female voice—older—suddenly. Link recognized the mature, almost cold tone instantly, but what he remembered more was the beautiful blonde hair that he'd gotten to daydream about after that meeting.

_"It's me, Cloud."_

There was a rather squirrelly male rumble and then laugh in the background. _"Right, you keep on doin' that," _he also heard.

Cloud sighed audibly; the thing must have been inches from her face. _"An. Y. _Way_,"_ she huffed, _"Zokoro and I are fine. Lau's hyper and's got a few scratches, but otherwise in tact. Advise?"_

Ah, the generals. He didn't have a lot of time to be around them, but he was on the fence about how tightly they would close ranks around each other and other exorcists. They seemed autonomous to the point of wanting nothing to do with each other, at times. They were self-important, and as people that had survived the Order for this long, couldn't have done that without knowing when to cut someone off. It was in their eyes at that meeting—all of them. Calculating who had what cards, which boat to jump on. In a fair fight he couldn't take them, especially the monkey, and he wasn't even sure he could stab a knife into the corotid of the giant convict and have him fall. But he _could_ get the Vatican to put pressure on them. And when people squirmed, they made mistakes—

_"Do you have General Cross with you, over?"_

_"Negative."_

_"Find and assist him if need be. Otherwise, come back here. over."_

_"Roger."_

The conversation died away. Tiedoll checked in, still working as he had been; no news there. If the man wasn't altering his consciousness somehow, it was Link's oppinion that he was plotting something. Wether or not they were paranoid plots, plots to make his students behave, or treasonous plots, however, was something that needed further investigation.

Link leaned over his hands, trying to distinguish between fresh blood and old coloring his fingers. Timcampy, whose frantic ministrations they had been unable to chase away, had been press-ganged into holding a light, and his wings flapped into Link's ear as Link tipped his head to get a better view.

"Here, is that finder back with my seuchers?" the lead surgeon asked. Both he and Link looked toward the kitchen; "Ah, there he is," Link said, spotting the man hurrying up the aisle toward them.

They took a breath before going back to the flesh; Link shrugged more sweat from his face. It was stinging something frightful.

"Did you know your face is burned? You should get that looked at, when we can get a replacement over here," the surgeon said, kindly.

He shook his head. "I'll be fine."

Link shifted his weight on his feet, but the doctor was still looking at him. "Thank you, however," he offered to placate.

The surgeon sighed and went back to the thread in his hand. "Kids these days. You should really take better care of yourselves."

"I thank you for your concern, but I really don't think that we have that luxury, until we end the war."

The doctor sighed again, and rubbed his eyes with his shoulders.

"How are you doing on blood, anyway?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Link said, looking to his elbow. "I can still stand. I don't know what you're going to do when I tap dry, though."

"God, this kid has too many holes. . . ."

Link was consdering what, if anything, to say to that, when the hovering black golem patched through again.

_"This is Supervisor Lee again. Has anyone seen Lenalee . . . or Allen Walker?"_

There was silence. The blood-spattered surgeon looked at Link. Link looked back at the surgeon.

_"Supervisor, this is Reever," _came the man's voice, soft and fuzzy. It was flecked with strain, and hoarse, punctuated by pauses of heavy swallowing. The man would die trying, he really would. Link respected that. _"The last time I saw Lenalee was just after you; she was with a medic. I think he was treating her head and was talking about responsiveness. . . . So, she may be asleep somewhere."_

_"All staff," _Komui responded after a breath. _"Has anyone seen exoricist Lenalee Lee or remember working on her?"_

_"She should be barefoot and have crosses on her legs," _Reever added.

_"I'll do whatever it takes to find her. . . ."_

_"Shut up, Bak. Whomever he's with, keep him down."_

_"It's been a while since I've seen her," _offered a new, winded voice. A man's. _"But I do remember her saying something about Allen Walker. I sent someone up to get him where she said he was, but the runner reported that no one was there."_

Link could almost hear the suspicious intake of breath silence the room. It was like everyone had paused their needles and saws. He nearly laughed.

Though . . . He blinked hard. He couldn't quite see straight.

_". . . There was just . . . a lot of blood."_

Link thought he heard Komui sigh, distant and muffled. He could almost physically feel the morale slipping away.

He should do something.

But how, now that was a question.

The blond eyed the innards his fingers were holding closed, then Timcampy, which was still fluttering frantically over Allen's chest, light in tail.

"Hey, golem," Link barked at it. Tim looked at him—at least he assumed that was what it was doing—and then flew over to just above Link's shoulder, over the floor. Link eyed it carefully, the rhythmic upward, downward movement . . . and then smacked his forehead, just above the burn, straight into it. The golden ball rocketed backwards, directly into the black bat flouncing around too far away to reach, and knocked them both out of orbit.

Timcampy fell out of Link's vision and all he cared was that it didn't fall on Walker's open wounds; the injured black golem, however, flapped over to Link's head obediently, jarred into paying attention to him.

"_Supervisor Lee_," he managed to grit out, "this is Link, over."

_"Link! Thank God, tell me you know where Allen is."_

That was probably the only time he was ever going to hear _that_ sort of gratitude from any of these people, and it was not lost on him. He smiled ruthlessly.

". . . 'Over'?" he asked. He shook his head out, waiting for the reply: his eyes were refocusing when they didn't need to be, and his limbs were singing in a jittery manner that he had managed to avoid for quite some battles until now. But, he reminded himself, he was being listened to by everyone—so he'd better make himself and L'Vallier look good.

_"Um, yes. 'Over.'"_

The embarrassment was clear, but he had no time to enjoy it. "Right. Well, I've got Walker here, but . . . do you have anyone that could give some A or O blood? Over."

Link looked over the bent heads of the now several doctors that clustered about the table, surrounded by finders; to his surprise, a lot of the room had grown honestly quiet, listening. To his right, someone was being wrestled to a table, and a high-pitched wail ended in an uncomfortable and sudden silence.

_". . . Inspector Link?"_

"We're in the back of the cafeteria, and that blood would be appreciated stat, please: we're running out of mine. I'm gonna pass out soon, I think. . . ."

"_Yours__?"_

Link sighed, momentarily forgetting what he was doing while his eyes blurred. "Affirmative, over...."

The shiver over the line was audible. _". . . How much blood have you put through him?"_

"Hard to say," he admitted honestly, looking over their tattered canvas of flesh. "It's kind of everywhere, and we've got two doctors still stitching things. . . ."

_"W_—_" _There was a pause. _"Like where? . . . O-over."_

"Presently?" Link asked. "My hand is in his lung."

There was a long, very long pause. ". . . What?"

Link shook his head. He was still speaking English, right? They'd all be screwed if he reverted to Dutch or something.

"Lung. That thing you breathe with. That. My hand is in it."

Link thought he heard a sigh, and a distinct, but far-away bout of swearing.

"At least Lenalee's alive, right?" he spat. "It's just one loss; I'm sure we can take it if you've got people that need it more. It's what Walker would say, is it not?"

". . . _Quite_." Link ignored the icy glare coming through the golem. L'vallier would be glad he was putting people on edge, at least. _"Right,_" the supervisor continued. _"Anyone currently in the cafeteria that can donate blood . . . there any supervisors still there that can collect them?"_

_"I can do it. . . ."_

_"Dammit, Bak, just stay down, would you?"_

_"Actually, I could parcel out jobs,"_ said a rather high, but unfortunately male, voice.

_"Jerry? That you?"_

_"Yes, dearie. I'm in the kitchen, sterilizing tools. We could use summore runners and cleaners, too. Could we just have um come back and see me? And poor Walker, I won't let anything happen to him!"_

_"It's a plan, then. Anybody in or around the cafeteria that could do either of those things, go see Jerry at the kitchen. Inspector Link."_

"I think I've finally got it . . . ," said the doctor to Link's left, as both of them leaned toward a particularly bad tear Link was holding closed and the man was pulling a suture from.

_"Do you have Timcampy there, Inspector Link?" _Komui continued. _"Have him fly above you so that we can figure out where you are."_

"Rog—_ah_!"

_"What? What is it?"_

He wasn't sure if the surgeon slipped or something under him moved, but a hot jet of blood spurted up and pelted both of them in the face.

"Ah, we—_ugh_, something ruptured. Sorry, we gotta go."

_"What? Ah . . . Dammit! . . ."_

Link rubbed his eyes clean and searched for the cause of the gusher. It was not where he had had his hands; oh the Holy Mother, it wasn't under his _rib_, was it—? "God_dammit_, Walker, you better wake up from this—"

_"__Idiot fucking desciple__!"_ roared the little bat, sending it out of orbit and causing several in the room to burst into puffs of smoke. _"If you don't wake the __hell__ up __immediately__, you will be stuck with the god-damned __bill__!"_

Allen's arm jerked, smacking Link in the thigh. He shivered enough to disrupt the surgeon working on his leg, and suddenly, there was gasping. Horrible, terrible gasping.

Link abandoned his quest for the wound and shoved his elbow over the boy's throat, just in time to see him trying to look down.

Allen's silver, bloodshot eyes were open wide, he was gasping, and Link did not, at all costs, want him to look at where Link's other hand was. As he held down a bleeding patch, it brushed against Allen's last rib.

Link fixed his eyes on Allen's face instead, and thank God, he didn't seem to be completely awake, or else he would have felt that.

_"Did that help?" _asked the general.

Link was starting to breathe quicker, heavier. A shiver went down his arm; it made him far too aware of the simultaneous rhythm in the lung he held with his left hand and the expanding of the hot throat under his other.

_"What?" _Cross's voice asked in the background, muffled. _"Don't give me that look, L'Vallier. . . ."_

A sudden cold burst from Link's chest down to the rest of him. For a split-second, everything he saw went nearly grayscale. _Oh, sh_—

"I think we need to get under that rib—"

He looked down, and there was new blood all over his arms, the medic's . . . it was everywhere.

"...L...ink?"

"_Don't. Fucking. Move_."

"Eng . . . lish?" Allen rasped.

_Oh f_—_. _Link screwed his eyes shut and dropped to the bench. "_Someone hold him,_" he commanded, as he laid both heavy arms over Allen's collarbone and rested his head in the crook of the boy's shoulder.

Link shivered; his mind wandered for an unknown amount of time as he gasped for air. When he finally pulled himself back into lucidity it was only by the idea that he had to remove the stint from his arm or else he could bleed to death, straight into Walker.

Hands, strong but gentle, gripped his shoulders and pulled him backward. His arm was pulled out to the side, and a sharp pain from it was enough to get his eyes back open.

His head was leaning back against a chest, and to his great surprise, a scowling Oriental face met his own for just a moment before turning out to the table.

Allen himself was giving the young man a very distasteful look. But the crease to Allen's white eyebrows smoothed and his eyes slid shut; his cheek fell back onto the table.

"I'm here to save your ass, pipsqueak," Kanda growled in answer. His hands tightened drastically around Link's arms. "You better not die, so that I can take this out on you later."

Allen's eyes fluttered under his eyelids, but he made no noise and he otherwise did not stir.

"You, you," Kanda commanded, motioning around several of the people trailing him, "take a needle." He handed off Link to a woman next to him, and then moved behind Allen's head, holding his shoulders down. "The rest of you, we're going to need you—do something useful and don't fuck up your blood supply."

There was a general shifting of bodies and a flurry of surgeons trying to stop the massive bloodloss, and Link stayed as small and out of their way as he could until he had stopped crashing long enough to stand. He hobbled to his feet as soon as possible, and then leaned against the wall next to his discarded clothes, holding his bleeding elbow on his knees. The flow would stop pretty soon, so there was nothing else to that. He just hoped the spots in front of his eyes and the anxiety turning his stomach would without issue, as well.

Another triage medic added himself to the pile and together Walker's newest wound was patched up enough to avoid killing him immediately. Link recognized, somewhere in the back of his brain, that if anyone he knew found him just sitting there, there would be hell to pay. Especially since he'd volunteered to get himself into this situation in the first place. Right and wrong would not be an issue. The Black Order's rules were King, and the rules were: "_Die for the Cause, not the Suspects_."

Hair sticking to the wall, he let his body splay out a little more, until he rested in a comfortable, half-awake position. His heart was beating annoyingly thick in his chest, and even though he was sucking in air like a drowning man, none of it felt like it got to him. On top of that, he was stupidly vulnerable: if he fell asleep, he wouldn't put it past an enterprising person like Kanda to come out of the woodwork and stab him inconspicuously while no one was looking, making it appear as though they were checking on him. He'd certainly been trained to do so. And hell, after the stunt he'd just pulled with Komui, no one would probably _care_.

And there was the truth. He was not protected, and even the people who could would snap their line to him in an instant. That was the oath he'd taken, and even though it was lonely against this wall, it was his fate and he was resigned to doing it well.

So he shifted into a position where he could watch the important things going on with Walker and most of the aisle along the length of the room. Beyond everything else, there was a definite incentive to keep his eyes off the floor. He had never _seen _so much blood and disembodied flesh in one place. Not in his entire career.

And this was home.

After a time, Kanda moved off, probably to find someone that matched his blood type, or to keep from killing Allen out of frustration. Link stared after him, his thin, black-clad back moving into the crowd.

His whole life, just like Link's, was to get harvested for someone else's benefit.

_And so, _he thought, staring up at the operating table, the bright lights, and the stains of red he'd rather not see, _the world struggles to live_.

With a sigh, Link closed his eyes, and reveled in the light that shone through their darkness.

* * *

**A/N:** Wow, part 2 is about 1000 words longer than part 1. And here I was thinking the first one was long. 9.9

**This was** an interesting foray into how Link probably has to go through life--compulsively noticing and cataloging people's behaviors and their interactions with each other in minute detail.

**Hee hee**, Cross. His voice can raise Allen out of anything.

**Also**: Lol, Kanda. It's not a pairing here, but I bet the KxA Fangirl Interpretation will do as it will to my poor story.

**Other note**: I know now that Kanda and Allen don't have the same blood type, but I didn't when I started writing this. No news yet on Link's. Honestly, they shouldn't even have blood transfusion tech for several decades yet, but well, they have computers and flying gizmos, I assume they've got modern medicine stolen from the Earl somehow, too. ;)

**And before you ask**: "Blonde" = woman and "blond" = man. :)

**I hoped you liked this second part.** Review or send a note to tell me what you liked, what might benefit from a fix, a typo, or even how it made you feel. I like those the best. Wonderful compliments are the best way to get more fics out of me.... :3 (...As if I'm that important, ha.) Thanks for reading! ^__^

**Last edited: 3/10 (general editing)**


	3. The Sun and the Moon

Oh em _gee_ gaiz, this chapter is done. Just in time for everyone to hate D. Gray For. Ev. AR. I have been known to have bad luck with timing IRL, it is true.

_Ah, and I fixed the idiot formatting mistakes I always forget to fix when I upload stuff here. *headdesk*_

A/N: As if the sheer amount of dialogue in this chapter didn't give it away that I feel my most-developed suit is and always has been dialogue, the word count is 2/3 more than the previous chapter. Just to prove that when people start talking, my stories get longer. (Which I don't think is the way it's supposed to work.... XD)

And, to you readers, I thought this might help: My interpretation of Link is based off of this idea: If you were sending an assassin to watch Priority Number 1, you wouldn't pick a ninny. You'd pick a guy who could PLAY the ninny, and get ya in a heartbeat too. :]

Also, this chapter isn't gore-filled like the others. I hope it's still up to the same quality level, but it's got a different focus. I also haven't beta'd it for six months like the other two, so it may change a little over time still. But I think it's still passable. The second and fourth scenes, I like the best. :3

Lol, Kanda. Again.

_Dance of Shadows III: The Sun and the Moon  
_

_

* * *

  
_

At the intersection of two long hallways, hidden to the side of the rooms reserved for exorcists in the labyrinthine hospital wing, stood a formidable, ornate door. The way to it grew increasingly more erratic, as Lavi moved from the brightly-lit common area where the likes of he, Lenalee, Krory and Kanda were still housed with their healing wounds. There was a small, wooden plank door he had been introduced to a while back, when he had taken to restlessly wandering the halls at night looking for where Allen had been taken. The door was on the same floor as their rooms and had no illumination by it; it hung on its hinges slightly crooked. Nearby was one solitary window with an arched top, but only one, dirty and cobwebbed and several inches thick. There were no bars, surprisingly, but people certainly weren't getting out of it.

But this was just the beginning. On the other side of the suspiciously rickety door tucked into the corner, the hallway became one person wide, a tight fit even for him. The walls suddenly lost their homey, if sterile, white plaster to reveal dark, damp stone piled feet deep. The lights were few and far between, single bulbs along the wall casting shadows in the silence. When an orb was out, he had to go in the absolute dark, toward the next island of light floating promisingly ahead.

The double-backing corridor started out as a plethora of metal doors with one small, square window in each, barred. As he dove farther in, the cells had black, wrought-iron doors set deep into the rough-hewn stone, definitive scratches along their worn locks. And after that, was a barren expanse with no doors at all and nothing but the lifeless cool to keep him company. The imaginary screams even drifted away.

One night he had walked this far (with Kanda along, admittedly) until finally, finally he could see a warm light glowing from around a curve. It spilled out along the ground and made him prominently aware that there was a blind corner here. He wouldn't have been surprised to encounter a spike-pit trap, or something as docile as an office used by someone who wanted to keep secrets.

And secrets were what they found.

Lavi had wanted to go first, he really did, but before he was done squaring his shoulders, Kanda had rightly so shoved him aside and vanished into light. If there was something awful ahead, it was better first encountered by Kanda, not just for his particular healing talents--for his reflexes and size, as well. Still, Lavi felt a sudden urge to be brave, even though that was exactly why he baited him into coming along--protection. Though, Kanda didn't have broken ribs, and the Bookman part of him was already blandly and pleasantly scribing, "And here Kanda Yu disappeared into history...."

Was that bad of him? Probably Lenalee would think so, yes. But was it undenyably him? Also yes.

Kanda's shadow disappeared with absolutely no event. There was a pause, as the candlelight burning into the floor flickered without a sound, and Lavi waited. Wondering how many seconds it would be.

And then, he thought he heard a disgruntled huff in the silence.

"Yuu? You still there somewhere?"

"_Yeah_," he grumbled, almost disappointed. Lavi heard him heave a sigh, and then, "Come 'ere, moron."

Lavi did so. Not ten feet from where he had stood, the corridor curved and then opened onto a wide T-intersection, a spacious square room made even bigger by the polished white-tile floor reflecting the candles that hung around the place.

Kanda stood in the center of a circular design in the floor, that was mirrored on the ceiling as far as could be told in the dim light, his back tightly chorded. Beyond his shape were four Vatican guards, and the dark, menacing door Lavi would come to loath as a symbol of his deepening inadequacy.

It was as red as Lavi's hair, brightly-varnished double oak and fully engraved with all the Order's splendor. He had found out, after that nocturne adventure with his fellow exorcist, that it was said to be coated with a varnish part blood in order to cast its spell, the fluid drawn from an unlucky, unwilling few plucked from the first round of human sacrifices given to the Order's causes.

This door, he had discovered, existed for one purpose and one alone: to seal the rooms that lay beyond. And everything that occurred within the hallowed chambers beyond occurred for one reason: to further the cause of the Order. But for all any of them knew, he thought as he was again before its massive presence, under the stares of the guards and minus his Japanese shadow, that there was more blood yet being spilled beyond the maze of carved crimson roses blocking his path.

"C'mon, Yuu, let's go," he had said, after both of them determined there was no way to force open the barrier and he had kept the man from dispatching the guards with his bare hands.

"_Fuck it all_," Kanda swore with a thickening accent. He spun on his heel and strode forward into the blackness, itching to sheathe a sword he didn't have. "He's as good as dead. Leave him behind."

"But Yuu, don't you want to save the Princess?" Lavi whispered, tipping his head slightly as he mirrored the guards' stare at him.

By the time Kanda had spoken again, all Lavi had seen was a world of breathing darkness speaking back to him.

"He doesn't want anyone's help, Lavi. I was hoping we'd find him _dead_."

* * *

"They're probably thinking I'm torturing you horribly in here," Link said, moving a pawn.

"Chess can be a torture, that is true," Allen returned amicably, considering the board.

The soft morning light spilled into the white room from its single but many-pained window, off to the right of Allen's bed. As he had been for many days now, he rested with his back against a stash of pillows, bound to the bone in patches, gauze, stitches, and salves. There wasn't much time in which he was awake, but when he was, all he had was a white room and Inspector Link, both of which were punctuated only infrequently by a few hours of excruciating pain brought on by the head nurse coming to change his dressings and check his wounds. Needless to say, he had a lot of time to think, and it was getting old.

Today, his dear living shadow the Dutchman had brought in a chess set from somewhere before Allen had awoken, and currently he sat opposite Allen's loosely-folded legs. Between them, Link had set out the chess board on an empty in-bed meal-serving tray, and the blond man perched with crossed legs on the far end of the bed, his coat draped over the baseboard.

"If you say so." Link shrugged, unconvinced.

"Why aren't you letting anyone in to see me," Allen said, finally deciding on a knight.

"It's not that I'm not letting anyone," Link persisted, stepping out a pawn. "No one has come."

"Should I really believe that?" A white pawn directed foward.

"You haven't seen me step out when there is a knock, and then come back with a scowl, have you?" He smiled, a bit deviously, and drew forth another pawn from the line. "No, I haven't hardly moved from this room, these many weeks."

Allen sighed, and stared at the board with a sad frown. "The Supervisor hasn't even come to see me.... I thought at least _he_ would come. You've even had that scary frenchman of a boss come see you, several times. Er, no offense."

"Just to tell me what I'm doing wrong," Link commented, putting his head in his palm. Then he flicked his eyes up to the boy and smiled wickedly. "I'll tell him you said that."

Allen's eyes went comically wide. Link shook his head in amusement, and fiddled with the top of the black bishop's crown, which was by his hand to begin with. "But no, the Supervisor came by while you were unconscious."

"And how was he?" the boy asked hopefully.

Link motioned at the board, and Allen quickly swooped out a piece to placate him. Link sat back and nodded. "Do you mean physcially? Or in regards to _you_?"

"Um...." Allen bit his lip, and then had a change of heart. "Both!--_Ow_...."

His cheer disappeared into a groan as he grabbed at his chest.

"Careful, Walker," Link muttered. "I spent a lot of time stitching you together."

Allen sighed, as he watched Link move another chess piece. "Right, right....'Not just you, either...'," he recited by rote.

"Correct. But that's my blood that kept you alive. Repay me by not sheding any of it through burst stitches."

_'Repay'...._

Allen dropped his head and shivered, and Link watched the whole spectacle with raised eyebrows. Until, of course, Allen looked back up with a determined stare.

"Right, I can do this...," Allen whispered to himself, as though Link weren't even there.

_Note_, Link thought:_ General Cross destroyed Allen Walker's sense of security._

"But in regards to the Supervisor," Link continued, picking up the bishop and holding it in the air, "He was a little battered but better than most. He was upset that you had to get so hurt during the battle, but through the whole time he kept professing a great worry over his sister, Lenalee Lee. He hadn't seen her yet, I guess."

"Oh...." Allen's face took on a downcast tint. "Well, that sounds like him...."

Link descended his bishop onto the board, clinking aside one of Allen's pieces. His fingers curled around the little white pawn, dancing it around his piece, and then spiriting it away completely.

Allen frowned at the missing pawn, but quickly moved to replace it in the defense line.

"Well, at least he came at all, and quickly, too. He must really have been worried about me...."

The last part died out. Link moved in a rook, beginning a flanking maneuver around a large group of pawns.

"I think he was."

"And he didn't ask about me once since then?"

"Not to me."

"Hm." Allen frowned, moving out his right bishop to protect the queen. Then he smiled, quite softly, but not serenely. Link instantly memorized the feature, catalogued it in memory, along with whatever would come after it.

"No, I understand," Allen admitted gently. "They have families, people who are important to them. They have to come first; I get that."

"...Do you really believe that?"

Allen looked at him then, sad; grey eyes reflecting the milky room with its milky light. Then he smiled, mockingly, while his gaze descended to the hands laid in his lap. "Of course I do. I'm just a waif, an orphan. From the moment I was abandoned by my parents, I was destined to be considered second and second-class." He rubbed his head, gingerly, slowly working his arm up to cause the least amount of sharp gasps along the way. But he did it, pressing through with his insecure gesture no matter what pains it took.

"No, I completely understand: they have family, obligations, people to look after. I'm on nobody's list, and I'm second if I am; I get that. But it'd be nice if they came to visit me, if just once. . . ." He smiled hopefully, and it died when he made eye contact with his captor. Maybe because he remembered who he was talking to, or maybe because Link had a particularly unforgiving look on his face--he wasn't quite sure.

Link, for his part, shook his head. It was just sad, but . . .

He took his rook and smashed through a line of pawns. "I'm glad you know your place, Walker. Nothing can cause more problems than mistaking that."

For a while, Allen did nothing but stare at the sheets. It had been quite a few weeks since he had bled on them and they'd gone through the riggors of changing them with him so battered, but pretty soon, he might be well enough to actually stand while they did it, facilitating the work to occur more often. It would be nice to have clean sheets, a clean home, again, and honestly, to see the matron while she and the nurses did it. They wouldn't have to worry over him anymore, and he wouldn't have to be helpless. It would be nice. It would be his goal, if only he could get his Innocence to cooperate and do it, too.

After a while, Link was still studying him and he roused himself into moving his less-injured arm in order to continuing the game. "Where's Timcampy? He's been gone for a few days....Hope he didn't get eaten by something...."

"He's been with General Cross, as far as I can tell." Link knicked over another pawn, much to Allen's displeasure. "Your friend ran off with another man, I'm sorry."

"Oh, shut up." But there was doubt in that voice. Behind fingers that obscured it, a dark smile curled across Link's cheek.

"What about Lenalee?" Allen asked.

"No news."

"Lavi?"

"Watching over Bookman."

"Bookman?"

"Indisposed."

"_Miranda_?"

"Being kept close watch by Marie."

"Marie, then."

"Bothering Kanda."

"Not that I care about Kanda coming to see me, but I assume he's being a right prick as always?"

"Of course." Link ticked a smile that Allen _could_ see. "Actually, he's been hiding out. He appears to be shaken, poor Orient thing."

Kanda? 'Poor thing_'_? Allen shook his head, wrinkling his nose. "Whatever you say. Sure, mate."

"Indeed. I _do_ say." Link moved another rook, and suddenly, only one pawn of Allen's was left in the cluster.

The white-haired youth groaned in frustration. "Can't we just play poker?"

"If you play sleeveless."

Allen scowled at him, hard.

"Cheating is a sin, Walker, and so is gambling."

"So is lying," Allen grumbled, catching Link's forgotten left bishop.

"And so is suicide, but you don't see me complaining."

That would throw him for a loop. While Allen's mouth fell open, Link's knight, moved for the first time, took out the last white pawn upon the starkly checkered plain. Link swept out his gloved hand with a smile, and Allen groaned.

"_Ah, man_...."

"Might I ask you something, Walker?" Link asked, sitting back while Allen eyed the board in distress.

"Yeah fine, what?"

"Why did the generals leave you up there to die?"

"Huh?" Allen's browline stitched together, and even though it had been a while, there were still bruisings and scabs that colored the skin around them, and conspicuously missing patches of hair.

"Up above the shutters: You were left against a wall. Lenalee Lee had to find someone to help you. Two of the generals should have been there, but instead, they left you behind. Why."

"Did they?" Allen looked rather horrified. "I..." His eyes swept across his sheets, and then to each wall of the room in turn, until he fixed on the grey-blue sky beyond the window. "I don't really remember that, I'm sorry."

Link tipped his head, considering. "You remember that pipe that was about to kill you?" He decidedly left off "in the lab," because he didn't really feel like stealing information out of crying suspects today."_Pipe...._" Allen stated.

"Yes. Big. _Big_. Nearly crushed you. Fire everywhere. Remember that?"

Slowly, Allen's head went from side to side, a smoothly-oiled axis in which his wide eyes did not waver. It was something he was strangely good at, and it still made Link shiver every time.... Not that he would let him see it.

"Why?" Allen asked. "Were you there or something?"

"Not at all," Link said, pulling up another piece from the board. "I heard about it and thought it might have hurt."

"Bloody sadist," Allen swore.

"Just worried about you."

The boy stared.

"We weren't sure you were going to make it. There is a _sizable _gap in your memory, and it's worrisome." He put down the piece he had been toying with, but left his finger on the top of it. "...So the doctor says."

"'The _doctor_'?" Allen exclaimed. "You've been talking to people about me? With what I tell you? It might not all be right, you know, I don't tell you everything--!"

"Do you not?" Link asked, faking facescious with the best affronted air he could pull on short notice. "Gee, I would never have guessed."

Allen's mouth fell open further.

"And now, I believe it is your move, Allen Walker," Link said with a cheerful smile he had quite forgotten he was capable of.

"Don't ever do that again, mate, if you could; that was wicked strange," Allen said, shaking out his head and only after the wince remembering that he shouldn't have moved.

"Dear me, and the Briton slang comes out."

"Go thump your bible or something."

"You know, if you learned to read, we wouldn't have these delightful games to play."

"I can read! A ... little!"

Link sighed, and it was genuine. "Have you ever even picked _up_ a Bible in your life, Walker?"

"Sure I did--When I was trying to beat the debauchery out of Master with it. Or when he was hitting me with it."

Link raised an eyebrow. _Well, at least the man did _something _right._

"No belts?" Link asked.

Allen's face fell. But then he recovered, tossing his head with clever eyes--as much as he could in his limited range of movement. "Oh, I suppose you're a whip-from-a-nun and a board-from-a-priest type of kid, huh? What kind of parochial schools do they have up there, in a place that uses flowers as currency?"

Allen laughed, and Link held up his hand. "We used the _bulbs_, not the _flowers_, and they _hurt _when people throw them at you, I'll have you know."

"Oh?" Allen asked, smiling brightly. "Who threw them at you, Link? The little girl next door, perhaps?"

"Ha, you wish." But then, he rested his chin on his folded fingers, and his look softened. He stared off into space, and said simply, "My parents, actually."

"Your parents? They threw things...?"

Link scoffed and shook his head slightly, though his eyes did not waver. "No...in the spring, we'd plant them. Big baskets of them.... And in the fall--you have to break off the new buds, you know?--there'd be a lot of throwing of those involved." He closed his eyes and shrugged, and Allen wondered at the place Link's mind was remembering. Sunny fields and a sharp sea breeze---

"That must have been the last summer I saw them, actually."

"...What?"

Link glanced back at him, lower jaw moving his hand as he spoke. "I haven't been back in . . . fourteen years." He arched his eyebrows at the thought, and then shrugged.

"But you're only...18? 19?"

Link nodded. "Yes."

"But--_why_? Why would you do that? You _had_ a family, why would you leave them?"

He shrugged again, turning his head to crack his neck. "When one is given a cause, one must follow it." He sighed and unfolded from the bed, standing up to stretch. "Going back's not something a person does in the Order, you know that."

He threaded his fingers together and then pushed his palms up toward the ceiling. Allen's muscles itched in jealousy, and he sighed. In the interim, he got a good look at the back of Link's vest, and just how long his hair was. He'd always wondered about that.

"Or do you?" Link asked, but when Allen checked, he was still turned away from him. The blond had folded his arm behind his neck from above, and was pulling his elbow back behind his head, farther than it actually should go normally. Allen's eyebrow twitched. Guy was in good shape, for a stuffy type.

"I wonder how many more siblings I have than when I left," Link continued softly, pulling his arm back further. "Or less. . . ?"

Allen mirrored his thoughtful hum, and turned back to the board. Tentatively, he reached out, and made a quiet but steady move with his king.

"I wonder who my mother is, sometimes."

Link turned to watch him from under his arms. "Not the father?"

The boy shook his head. "I don't care who my father is. I have Mana."

Allen took his finger from the pointed crown, and slowly, Link unfolded his arms. He bent down over the board, took his remaining bishop, and placed it at the very last white square it could claim.

"And that, my friend, is check and checkmate."

***

"Ah! No!" Allen wailed, flopping back into the pillows. "I'm so _bad _at this game. I'm better at bloody Majongg!"

"That, last I checked, is a game you can also cheat at, albeit it is hard to." Link considered it for a second, mildly impressed by the possibility. One had to use the talents one was given, after all.

"Shall I take this back to General Tiedoll, then?" Link asked amicably, smiling down at him.

_"Pleeeease_, take it away!"

Link nodded, rematerializing the pieces he had stashed away and carefully plucking the others into their place within the set. "I'll get you something to eat while I'm at it."

"Would you really?!" Allen beamed, radiating like the moon as the ray of white sunlight from the window was making a halo of light around his head. Link stared at the view for just a second, and then shook his head out. Maybe just like a good cream pie, perhaps, rather than the moon. . . .

Allen considered the momentary lapse in demeanor on Link's part and the rather practiced wrist flicks with which he handled the game pieces. Maybe he fenced, or something?

As Link straightened to his full height, which wasn't much admittedly, Allen blurted: "I'm not a traitor, you know."

"That's nice," Link said, without missing a beat. The way he was prone to whenever Allen brought it up.

"No, I'm serious. What the hell would I be doing, letting myself get this messed up? Be suspicious if I were fine, like ... Kanda, or ..." His head twisted up to Link, with a growing look of horror. "..._You_...."

If Link was in any way surprised, he didn't show it. Instead, a grin stretched across his face, white and toothy. "Starting to understand the game now, are you?" He hefted the folded board and tipped his nonexistent hat with it. "All the more reason to suspect you, my dear Walker."

And with that, he disappeared from the room, Allen sputtering behind him.

* * *

Link closed the looming double-oak doors to the second antechamber, the last room to travel through to get out of the suite that was Walker's "accommodations." And when he slipped through the massive doors of the Seal, just as he suspected the dear rouge-headed Bookman Junior was waiting for him with a dark scowl plastered across his features, like he had been almost every day this week.

Link clicked the door shut behind him softly, feeling the magic lace up his fingers to reset the binding as he did so. When it was done tingling up his arms, he pushed his shoulders back in challenge. The several sets of Central guards on either side helped the effect greatly. "_Yes_?"

"You can't keep him locked in there forever, you know. What are you doing with him?"

"Making friends, in the abscence of all of you."

The rogue's bright green eyes narrowed. "Don't lie to me."

Link shrugged.

"I could force my way in there, claiming the Bookman rite, and you couldn't do anything about it, you know that."

"That's true. And that's exactly what I'd tell him--that that's why you wanted to see him, and _only _why. And I would hold you to it, rest assured. I could also get you thrown out of the Order for what you just said, and then what would the old man say?"

He smiled pleasantly, if just a little smarmy, and Lavi nearly growled.

"Come, walk with me, if you have something more to impart. I've got a General to see. I'm sure you could benefit from some time with one."

"Oh shut the hell up," Lavi snarled, as Link walked away. "I could break down that door, you know! I could!"

"No you couldn't," Link called over his shoulder, swinging a key around his index finger. He quickly snapped it back up into his palm, and felt the warm energy radiate. There were barriers activated by the absence of the crest on this key, so numerous and ancient not even the likes of Cross Marian could open them in less than a week.

He could hear Lavi fume behind him, and it was far more satisfying than he probably should have let it been.

"You're making Lenalee cry, you know that?! She's worried about Allen, you pony-tailed freak, and she can't even come see him! Even Komui's worried sick from all of your damned red tape. You can't be _that _horrible of a man, can you? You haven't fallen to L'Vallier's level _yet_, have you, you goddamned prick!" He growled in frustration, and then chased after Link's retreating back. He caught him around the dark corner, clutching his shoulder in the single-file shadows. "What could be so _important _that you'd be willing to make a little girl _cry_!"

"Because it's more important that you are alive tomorrow--_All _of you, and the rest of the people we have here--than to have you see him!" Link snapped back, whirling on his heel and smacking his hand off. "Do you get that, Lavi?"

He flinched at the name. Link had never spoken it.

"It's not _about _that, it's about the world we've got to save!" Link continued. "I don't know what you care, but the rest of us have too much riding on this organization to stop and think about one life! Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't! Know your damn place and _stay _in it, you lousy American!"

Lavi frowned and straightened. The both of them huffed at each other for a second, and then Link shook his head, like a bristling animal. "Yes, I know your secrets, Lavi," he grumbled, smoothing down the side of his jacket. "Besides, if you really cared about him you would realize I'm just doing the job I'm here to do. You would go _around _me to someone who could _do _something about it." He guestured upward flippantly with his hand, all the while shaking his head, but gears in Lavi's head were starting to turn.

"Here, come 'ere." Link ushered him over, a little further back and toward the stone. They were out of range of the guards, both sight and sound, and it piqued Lavi's curiosity. The redhead came within a few inches of him when they reached it, but the blond moved back further into the shadows, continuing to motion him. "Here, closer. Closer."

"Yeah? What is it? What?"

Link leaned against the wall with one shoulder, and Lavi, checking back once and then leaning in conspiratorily, leaned his shoulder next to him against the damp earth, arms crossed with a knowing raise of the eyebrow.

_Like he was being smooth...._ Link reshuffled the chessboard into his left hand, sighed, and then rammed his free fist into Lavi's gut.

No sound other than a soft whoop of breath even escaped him, and it was immediately drowned out in the silence of the tunnel. Lavi curled around Link's arm, and Link dropped him into the shadow from the escarpment in the wall. "That's for giving me holy hell in public," he said, shaking out his hand.

Through gritted teeth, Lavi looked like he was trying to curse something at him, but it wouldn't materialize. Just as it should have been; Link was satisfied enough with his fist's performance; he wasn't getting rusty afterall, all those weeks with Walker.

He placed the chessboard to the back of Lavi's head, forcing him to bend forward slightly. "Since it seems I'll be with Walker for at least a week more, say "Thank you" to that Kanda for me, and give my deepest apologies to Miss Lenalee. This work wasn't made for women, but we all do what we have to."

The redhead gasped, clutching at his stomach, and then coughed something that was probably supposed to be "Fuck you."

Link sighed, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands. "I guess I'll try again next week." He swooped down the hand with the chess set and impacted the exorcist's head with it. Lavi sprawled against the crook in wall, gasping sharply. He blinked heavily while the world spun, clawing at the wood for purchase.

Link dusted off his jacket and spun on his heel, determined to acheive Tiedoll's chambers within the hour. Curses disappeared behind him, and he strode rapidly down the ancient hallway, going for the secret exit. "Holy Mother in Heaven, how obvious do I have to be around here?"

* * *

Allen stared at the ceiling, that white expanse that he would often find himself staring at when he would come to realize that he had lost consciousness for a while. It was familiar and calm by now; he had memorized every dip in the plaster, the way the sunlight streaked across the room at different times of day when he awoke. The light was moving, now, slowly drawing down onto him. The little shadows in the uneven plaster were starting to sparkle, dancing across his view as he waited, listened, tried to breathe.

"Tim_campy_...?"

He could feel his arms, legs, everything tingling with hypersensitivity before he started swimming. He suddenly felt very light, the only sensation the very edge of his fingers and toes tickling, the sensation into his brain grainy like the picture was full of swarming dots.

When he blinked, it was hard to open his eyes again, and the movement of his lids took _time_. And it was sweet, that feeling when his eyes closed.

His ears started to ring, a soft sound just at the edge of consciousness, growing in time like ocean waves. The white was no longer so white, it was growing blue like the sky, with waves of clouds in between the sunbeams.

"Tim, where are you . . . don't leave me. . . ?"

The waves were rolling, like the endless bodies of water he had seen. He was going to drown one of these days, slipping under the cold roiling sea of the jet black, as if he had never been there at all.

He wanted the cold, the blanket of ice to slip around him and cool his limbs, he wanted to float but he just kept sinking, farther and farther and hotter and hotter.

_If she hadn't been there....We would've died. Innocence, I would have died....And she would have had to cry again._

He remembered Lenalee's concerned face, suddenly, bending over him with a shadowy backdrop, but he couldn't remember where it had come from. It was sad for a while, concerned, until it transformed into something much, much worse.

_That __soul__._ Allen closed his eyes, but couldn't chase the feeling, of the darkness and the warped color pounding against the insides of his head.

He turned into the pillow, as much as he could; the stitches moving as he moved his head and scraped his legs against the sheets.

This was all he could move. And he had been here for weeks now. Was _still _struggling to breathe.

_We need to get stronger, Innocence. Stronger...._

The image of Lenalee and the trapped souls crying came to him together, at once, an amalgamated mass distorting and screaming and it threatened to split his head, unbalance his stomach and carry him away completely. He reached up to press at his head, and had the distinct feeling some part of him was bleeding.

His left arm was lying wrapped in white, just like the rest of him, the fingers slightly curled and unresponsive. He forced his eyes shut and breathed through his nose, trying not to feel the stitches stretch as he did so; tried not to think about how his heart might bleed again if his grasp on the Innocence failed.

_I can't do anything lying here. I never want to see that again; I want to make sure they're okay. Have to stop the akuma from evolving...._

The Innocence resonated, faintly. Like it was hiding underneath many layers of flesh, rather than being at the surface like it was. It was soft, though, a feeling of purity, a white glow that made him feel normal again in that one small section of his hand. If it could only get to his stomach, he wouldn't feel like he was dying, and he may get to see some of his friends before they forgot about him.

Potentially, before they or he died. If he wasn't there to protect them, what then? Without him, they'd die, just like Mana. They'd be cold, like everyone he'd seen put into the ground.

The Innocence pulsed, and he twitched his fingers in response. Crown was sad. It felt for him, but, in the same way that it couldn't really feel guilt, it couldn't completely understand making him feel better via human sympathy. But it knew "normalcy;" it knew "rightness" and "health" as its benchmark, and so it tried to give him that. He appreciated it; he could use more of it. But he had overtaxed it or it had overcooked him or both, because It had yet to come from its shell and explore the rest of his body like it tended to when he was this broken.

For now, he was on his own, even though he was surrounded by entities of one kind or another.

The shadow was still in the window, and trying to ignore it was harder than anything else. Allen sighed, breathless and half aware, and turned to the brilliant blue beyond the glass. The Shadow was looking at him from slightly above, head tipped as if considering him. Perhaps it was; it made him feel a little better to think it worried about him.

As it was, though, he had become acutely aware of how it would be his sentinal if he died in this room.

Allen blinked, slowly, at it, and it was possible it did just as if it were an akuma's soul, but diesmbodied--as if an akuma's soul were following him around, instead of the usual way.

It hadn't spoken since the Ark though, and even if it did now, with the course dots creating a screen over his vision, he wasn't sure he could trust it to be real if it did now. If it _was _real.

Allen sighed, sinking further into the pillows. Regardless, it'd be nice if it would tell him what it wanted, why it was watching him, what the hell it _was_, so that it could go away pretty soon and he could get back to the akuma....

He was staring at it, he realized suddenly, and it was staring back.

It had talked before. He could make this work.

"You won't tell me what you want? Are you lost?"

The smile crooked up, just a little, but the eyes--or lack of them--did not change.

It was just . . . waiting?

"What are you here for?"

Simply, it tipped its head the other way.

"Is it ... me?"

The Shadow blinked, and then it walked out of the frame.

Allen sighed, and turned back to his sparkling cieling.

_I'm not getting enough air...._

Come to think of it, he was gasping, wasn't he?

So much air, sucking it in. His chest was heaving, he could see it at the bottom of his vision, but he could also feel things ripping. Muted, always muted in the haze of morphine and aching all over his body.

He was passing out, for the umpteenth time. The Innocence . . . that warmth in his hand had been the first time he'd felt it in days. This was probably some reaction to the Innocence, draining too much from him.

And then suddenly, there was an all-too-familiar voice in his head, as if it was next to his ear. And his right arm was moving on its own.

_"My...Allen."_

The hand ghosted down the raised line of stitches to his bellybutton, not particularly gracefully, to the music of slight chuckling echoing around his brain. Then his fingers slid back up the mountain chain, repeating the movement across the other line of puckered flesh, the ridge embedded in his left pectoral.

He wasn't sure if it was the sparkles in his eyes or something else, but he couldn't feel the sensation at all.

_"...Is _sick_."_

His hand came to rest on his abdomen, and across his wounds, something blossomed, warm, and dark. It was nothing but darkness, but it was a _pretty _darkness, soft flecks of shadowy color in silken depths smoothing around him. It was warm and familiar, that darkness, pooling all together and floating around within him. After a while, Allen bonded with it, lost in a cradle he didn't realize he had known before.

There were no thoughts, no memories in the primordial sea, but a whispering male voice, whose syllables he could not recognize, floated around his mind and lifted just as the weight of the water receeded. The gentle colors disappeared completely, and Allen was left floating in a place of not quite awake, not quite asleep. And it was white. So very, very white, in a way that made him hum in happiness.

This was his Inncocence, and he understood now.

_"How's the heartbeat?"_

_"Strong. And more so even than it's been in weeks." _There was a pause, soft and far-away, in which Allen smiled at the winking lights behind his eyelids.

"It would seem," the woman's voice said eventually, "that he's actually better." Her mouth tipped down.

With a happy little warble, Allen opened his eyes, and found a white coat to greet him.

After a moment, a dark-haired head came into view as well, and a hand smoothed over his head.

"How are you feeling, Allen?" Komui whispered. For the first time in a long time, hairs didn't slip away.

"Mm, Ko'mmm'i," Allen smiled, dreamily.

The warm hand stroking over his hair patted him, after a time. "Good news, Allen. Your Innocence healed you again. You're going to be all right...."

"...'n wasn' my Inn'sence," Allen muttered. "But it helped." He reached out with his left hand, and grasped the folds of Komui's coat.

"I found out. Ih' was waiting, Clown was waiting, 'til i was bedder." He smiled. "It wasn' run'n 'way from me...."

Komui smoothed over Allen's hair again and plucked off the smaller hand, curling his fingers around the boy's. Weakly, the black digits squeezed back, and Allen gave him another drunken smile.

"Why would your Innocence do that? You work so hard for us. God loves you, Allen."

Allen frowned. "Tha's nah tru, Komwi. 'S why 'm still here. Don lye...."

Allen trilled off unhappily and Komui just nodded, patting Allen's head like he would a small child. He did, however, cast a worried look toward the far wall of the room, where a particular blond was leaning, glaring profusely.

"Can see th' otherss ssoon?" came the little voice, as the arm came again to tug at his coat.

The matron, who was on Allen's other side, leaned over her patient and tucked him in to the sheets once more. "If you're good, and do what I tell you, you might soon be well enough to be moved in with everyone else. No one's been formally released yet, especially not to go bother the other patients. You have to promise me you won't wander around."

Allen frowned, his clouded eyes working hard on something as they flickered. He turned to Komui again, voice hoarse and cracking. He probably wouldn't last much longer in this segment of wakefulness, the man realized. Allen's mouth worked for a second, but finally he asked, "Still? Af' all this time, no one's k?"

Komui nodded, giving Allen's a friendly pat on the hand that was still attached to him. "Even Lavi broke a few ribs, not to mention his head." he grinned. "We don't want him going anywhere, and he's too restless to let loose. You know how he is."

"Hmmm." Allen smiled a sleepy grin, nestling down into the pillows. "Howz evv'one else?"

"They're all doing much better. Recovering even faster than you, little Allen!"

Allen smirked, but there was a pained look stretching over his eyebrows. "'M glad. 'm glad."

They worked for a while, in silence, until Allen's voice piped up again, his eyelids working open again. "Lenalee?"

"She wants to see you," Komui smiled, sitting on the side of Allen's bed and taking up his black hand. "She's been worried sick about you."

"m sorry."

"Don't be sorry. She'll be so happy that you're finally getting better. I am too, you know."

Allen smiled pleasantly at that, and for a while, was contented with watching Komui work over Allen's Innocence-covered hand.

Komui had a way with Innocence, when he wasn't being insane, that was just the right amount of reverence and business sense. Allen let him work, ignoring the lack of his hand in exchange for the comforting sensations he had recieved ever other time he'd come back from a mission and half-passed out in a chair in the science department.

Allen sighed happily and let it be. This was the way things worked. He went out and fought, the science department came in and dealt with him with kindness he had rarely known in life.

Certainly not what he had known from Cross most days.

Slowly, Allen felt a look boring into his head. He opened his eyes the direction from which he felt it, and his gaze fell upon his dear Inspector Link, glaring daggers at him.

The matron had gone around by Komui and, in the open spot, Link stormed over and placed a deck of cards on bedside table.

"I take your bet, and raise you," he said, clipped.

Allen's snowy lashes danced downward, and one side of his mouth couldn't help but pull up, unnaturally far. When he spoke, his voice was decidedly stronger than it had been, and he didn't think that was showing his cards at all.

"But I thought you liked our games together, Inspector."

* * *

omake:

Tiedoll: Why is there blood on my chessboard?

*awkward pause*

T: You aren't doing anything to poor Allen you shouldn't be, are you?

L: No, just that devil-haired Lavi character.

T: Ah, very good. carry on then.

L: Thank you. I will.

* * *

A/N: Blatant chess parable is blatant. XD

The stuff with Lavi at the beginning I think is a bit long, so it's okay to tell me if that's true. It just came out and I dunno what to do with it now. I managed to tie it in, at least? D:

I think the ending is a bit cheap but oddly striking because you didn't see it coming. I think it sums things up in a way you don't realize at first. But then again, I've never been good with endings. :/

Special thanks again to everyone who has read and left such nice reviews. 3 Thank you for pandering to the type of reviews that I find useful. It's not that I'm not tough, oh not at _all_, it's that I value happy people more.... ^^;;;;; ?

These are the three parts that were originally meant to be Dance of Shadows. There might be two more parts, one with more gore and one that's much later in the future. But who can say. It's hard not to be hax when Komui + OMG DISASTER + _omg Allen's losing hair_. But you strangely feel a great drive to see that, don't you? XD It's just hard not to be hax. XD;;; I'll try though. Tell me if you want to see it. XD;

As always: I love reviews where people squee at me and go, "Oh, I really felt that part, and this one really stuck out." It's also fair game to say, "I didn't quite understand this" or "that didn't ring quite right with me." So long as you play nice, pretty pleeease. x3

Hearts to you guys! :D Enjoy it summore.

Thanks, Gani~

last update: 10/09


	4. Ash and Life

**There are spoilers in this up through just after the "Timothy" arc.** You have been fashionably warned.

**Just to clarify: This chapter jumps back in time and is set just after chapter two. **The chapters revolving around Allen and Link are completed for now, and now we look into "everyone else."

I did a whole bunch of editing on this and it became 34 words longer. Lol, I fail at this game.

Then again, I've never been one to do things in the expected way.

Anyway, I hope you like this chapter. It's been so long in coming.

(And sorry the dashes are so short. It's a file conversion error.)

* * *

_Dance of Shadows_ chapter 4:

_Ash and Life_

Kanda stared at his hand, black burned over his skin, a laceration of pink and bleeding red striped down one side of his palm through his forearm. The distinct fumes of charred flesh, the crackles of the flames in the background din broke through, abruptly. _The rivets on the elevator's floor dug into his wounds, making it harder to think, to see around his curtain of singed hair, and then, came the sour plume of akuma poison._

_ Alone, he wasn't sure it had a smell, had a taste or sound, but in his experience it was always accompanied by the flesh with which it had taken. It drowned out all his other senses now, a wave rolling over, breathing heat into the air as the chemical process broke down the last of the humanity around him. Around Komui._

_ He looked up, just in time to see the piles of ash growing in front of those black arms he had._

_ That look on Komui's face-_

_ And to Allen: Soundless words which had no meaning. But which would have to carry them through._

_Hang in there._

It had seemed like the necessary thing at the time.

And then Komui had the gall to apologize.

It hadn't been a fun thing to see. It confirmed the reality of their losses. There would be no gentle hand to assure them of the point to their sacrifice, that the images that would haunt them weren't really as bad as they thought. There would be no hand to make the memories fade, no hand to lead them to their safe place, and no one to make the tremors stop.

And this time, the memories were not fading. As time went by, they grew steadily more vivid each time they overcame him and left him alone wherever he happened to be, his muscles twitching.

They did that, sometimes. Some things never left you, no matter the struggle against them. They would still take you without notice in the daytime, and trap you when did manage to sleep.

This time, there would be no one to pick up the shards of hope strewn about the shadows on the floor.

In that moment of bowing his head, Komui had left them all alone.

"_You're all we've got right now_-"

"Kanda Yuu..." It was one of the doctors, bending down to clasp the hand Kanda had been flexing incessantly. The fact that he called him by that name either meant he'd been trying to get his attention for a while, or he thought it was the right thing to do. Kanda didn't particularly remember seeing the guy around, but he could have, though that sad, kind look on his face was nothing that endeared him.

"_What_," Kanda barked, jerking his hand back.

But the man was not deterred-that hand ended up on Kanda's knee, aggravatingly. "I think you can stop now," said the tired man. He had brown hair, was in his forties most likely. Aged, this man did. Ironies. "I think there's no one else that needs the blood."

Kanda looked around the cafeteria, becoming aware of the stiffness in his neck for the first time in a while. He must have been sitting there a while, for not only that but the large amount of empty tables that had appeared. The loti in his vision had piled up along the row of tables directly in front of him, some stationary and some spinning lazily on the top of tables and benches as though they were adrift in water. To his right, there were many that still moved rapidly-attached to the living, people busying themselves with . . . living things.

On the two rows of tables to his left there was a decided lack of loti, more than the last time he had been aware. Reality was still starkly reality, when it came to the lines of corpses.

Kanda grunted, reaching for the stint in his arm. "I see."

The man nodded, moving to assist. "Thanks."

"Whatever. I'm just surprised it worked." He shrugged, watching no more than two droplets make it out of the hole in his elbow before the wound clotted. Such a minor trauma as the stint was, he had been dubious that his skin wouldn't heal around it and either embed the thing in him, or continuously push it out. And as for giving people _his _blood in the first place. . . ?

He must have been staring for too long again, because the doctor felt it necessary to fill the silence and pat him on the knee again.

But he was smiling, and the loti always shined brighter when people did that. Even if it was, frustratingly, aggrieved.

"You've saved so many lives today kid, you don't even know."

Kanda didn't know how he could take that without retorting something highly to the opposite, so he didn't. He just stared, and found he had gotten rather good at tuning out people to their face.

The guy started saying something else just in time for Kanda to notice a particularly tiny lotus that was blooming on the man's comm earring. It cycled, slowly, constantly growing, losing petals and regaining them, in an effortless, brightly-glowing spin. The longer he looked at it, the stronger he could hear a melody ringing in his ears.

Such a little thing, making so much racket.

. . . A pleasant racket, but still.

". . . I hope it didn't hurt you too much," the doctor said by way of apology. He gave Kanda one long clasp on the shoulder, and then got to his feet with several containers of Kanda's blood in his arms.

Kanda stared after his retreating back.

_There goes a little bit more of me_.

And then he was gone.

* * *

Having blood drawn when it regenerated just as quickly was an interesting experience. He couldn't swear that he felt it down to the molecular level within his bones, but there was definitely a buzz from the energy in the curse itself. It swept out from a metaphysical reserve somewhere in his chakra, pooled into the curse mark and then spread its way over his cells-in some cases insulating and in others collecting hemorrhaging pieces-that went down to the mitochondria and proteins. And when there wasn't even that, it stimulated the cells that _were _still there to do things they shouldn't be, and that was another feeling all in itself.

But for now, as he lay back in the chair like an invalid, there was just the beat of his heart, the thrum of the curse working, and a gentle warmth in his bones, making blood.

An internal source of warmth. . . . His Innocence created that as well. If the Innocence hadn't done that from the beginning, he would have given up on considering himself anything like human a long time ago.

Odd, that he managed to ground himself to his humanity only by something that was divine.

But what did he care. At least the screams around the room had died down. He was no longer touching blood whenever he set his feet down. There were probably still entrails about, but the flowers helped that quite a bit, at least where there were still the living next to the mess.

As it was, he had no idea how they were going to eat in here again.

He took a breath, and felt the tingle recede from the surface of his skin. That would be the spell deactivating, so it was time to go do something other than think of the doctor carting off his pieces. He was a little hungry, most likely, but ... ug. Had he really just thought that? Impressive.

The ceiling, he supposed, was about the color of soba in between the beams. Even if anything had been available _and_ he felt like proving it to everyone that he _could_, his stomach didn't feel up to it. The curse was like that: it didn't heal its own after-effects. Like an end to expendable idiots and new recruits that just got themselves killed, it was too much to ask.

Kanda sighed and glanced at the main doors. Was there really anything else he could do at this point? He had a body that screamed, "Why bother _learning_ medicine?", the fires were supposedly all out, and he wasn't exactly useful for morale. He was probably more useful for making people _want _to die to clear space, and he didn't feel like reminding himself that they deserved it, just now. So he could wait for something to happen, or - was that Miranda and Komui?

A white coat that most definitely was Komui, trailed by a cluster of Vatican guards, Miranda, Marie, and who the hell else that needed something, were just entering the far end of the room looking haggard. Komui was still decently upright, propelled only by the inner reserves that kept the furious grip on his clipboard.

Curious, Kanda sat up and followed their trek across the room.

Wait-_Miranda_?

Kanda skirted the back end of the cafeteria as Komui's group weaved in and out of his sight. He ducked around a couple of surgeons, slipped on some blood. By the time he got to the far row to spot them again, Komui and a series of people were clustered about one table, and his feet were sticking to crusted fluids on the floor.

A wall of white-coats were nearest him, but over their heads Kanda caught the end of Miranda descending from Marie's shoulder. She was standing gingerly on one leg.

No view of the patient was readily available, and Kanda already knew he didn't need to see it. So he hung back, trying to pick out those assembled.

Komui had taken up talking to the doctors; each greeted him, if curtly. One doctor turned to Miranda. "Please bear with us Miss, this might be . . . a little harsh." There was some reshuffling of bodies. "I'm sorry if you haven't seen a man exposed before. No one will hold it against you, rest assured. But try not to be too . . . surprised . . . at the condition of this one, if you can."

"How many stitches?" Komui's asked.

This had to be Allen, Reever, or Bak, Kanda realized with a start. There was no one else they would have this many people around. The older two had been relatively well, so then. . . .

Komui was surveying the table from over Miranda's head. He was frowning, furiously.

But-stitches? Kanda found himself wondering. Hadn't Allen's Innocence healed him last time? Or had that really been just blind rumors from people in need of faith?

The doctors shifted uncomfortably.

"Uhm...I dunno, 'least 150 in the upper region I worked on," said the first surgeon.

"Aaabout ... 75, maybe...?" came the second voice.

"At least 200 in the chest, at _least_. Both of us were working on it. And there's gotta be 250 in his legs alone," amended the third surgeon.

"His legs? What's wrong with his _legs_?" Komui demanded, looking up.

"Shrapnel, bone fragments...Oh, fuck, did anyone check his ribs? Oh, sorry miss. . . ."

Miranda glanced up out of her trance, looking confused. "Uh? Oh, its-it's okay. . . ." She moved back a bit towards Marie, hands clasped together for dear life.

The doctors turned to confer, and Komui frowned: "I did get to the hips, they actually seem intact, but I forgot about the rest . . . ," said the second man.

"You _opened _him _up _and you don't know about his _ribs_?" Komui swore.

_You're surprised at such incompetence?_ Kanda wondered, his head darting back and forth as the parties spoke.

"It's not that," the third man assured him. "We couldn't turn him over. Even if he has broken ribs in the back though, it won't make any difference: we can't set anything with all the stitches in the front." He sighed, and motioned at Komui. "As it is, he's going to need to be doused with alcohol every hour, and that's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. . . ."

He ushered Komui over to the side. In the parting of the white sea, Kanda saw Link, sitting on the bench. He was sitting far to the side, his head in his hand. After watching them go, he immediately ground his head into the heel of his palm, as if trying to stay awake. Or possibly giving them a false sense of security.

For just a moment between swaying coats, Kanda made out a slip of the arm on the table, peach and then red.

"We're out of morphine, we're out of _everything_," the doctor continued. "We're down to opium people had stashed around the place and contraband from I don't know the hell where. We got some stuff from a couple a science guys that knock you out but I don't know what the hell it'll do to you . . . but right now, I'd give it to the kid."

Komui nodded, glanced at everyone near him whom he knew to be listening, the back of Link's head included. "Yeah. . . ?"

"I'm glad this kid's alive Komui, don't get me wrong, but every moment this kid's awake within the next month is going to be another moment he's either going to want to kill himself-God forbid," he added quickly, as if Komui cared, "-or is going to run himself down that much closer to dying. He _needs _to be in a coma, Komui. _Needs_ to be, for how many reasons I can't even begin to explain to you. But he woke up on the table, while we _had him open_. Innocence is one hellofa thing, but it's gonna _kill _'im if it keeps that up. He's got one fucked-up chance, Supervisor Sir, and I don't even think there's anything we can do from here on out but watch him do what he's gonna do, and maybe hold his hand a little."

The man grumbled and wiped at his eyes, his forehead, his neck, too frustrated for words. Eventually he sighed, apologizing even as he threw his arm down in exasperation. "He needs to be under, I'm sure there's two-hundred other people that need the same, but there's nothing left to do it with. _Please _help us."

While they were speaking, a bit of green appeared to his left. It was Lavi; as the doctors moved to the side to confer with Komui, he came to the edge of the table as silent and smooth as a ghost. Whatever he was looking at, he seemed to be taking it in with a detatched, macabre interest, judging by the angle of his head and tight set of his shoulders.

Kanda frowned, and found himself finally walking there, too.

Without a sound, he took his place next to Lavi. The man took no notice of him, but Kanda easily discovered why: with equal parts fascination and horror, he found the thing on the table.

The table stretched out in front of him and on it, at first, all he saw were legs. What had to be Allen's legs, which he realized had never really seen. They were pale and a bit knobbly with scruffy white hairs, and currently, stitched together like a ragdoll's.

The bottoms of his feet were cut up somehow, and the lashes only continued upwards. His ankle was probably twisted, given the swelling; dark bruising bloomed from his other ankle up to his thigh, and embedded in his flesh were mountains of wires.

It was impossible to see wounds in the charcoal-black arm, but the congealing blood near it indicated it was seriously damaged. There were slightly glowing white marks just beginning to appear, but it was slow and thin: even when his arm had reattached, it had been with still-open wounds, not knitted clots.

The rest of his skin, usually pale anyway, was powder white, and if he was breathing it was hard to tell. He was as still as a corpse. Cuts and bruises littered him from head to foot, and they were interrupted only by patchwork black skewers protruding from the ribbons of red and purple flesh they held closed. A massive and hastily-done track of stitching went from his shoulder, down his chest, and into his abdomen, ending just above the only bit of clothing they left on him-a very shortly-cut part of his trousers. The rest of his legs looked like a mine field, but Kanda couldn't particularly force himself to look away. Down Allen's far thigh was a long, clean cut left hanging open, mounds of swollen flesh protruding. It was nothing but purple around it, as well, so it wasn't hard to guess why it was there they'd cut open. The amount of swollen flesh protruding in wrinkled heaps like mashed meat or crumpled rags meant they weren't going to do anything with it for a while-if he lived, they'd let the swelling go down and cut out what wouldn't got back in.

. . . Allen was in there somewhere.

He was going to be useless after this.

At Kanda's shoulder, Lavi didn't really bother acknowledging him, staring at the boy on the table in exactly the fashion he had been. He almost lazily traced the tracks of stitches and discoloration with his eye, analyzing how Allen's fight must have gone-

-during the amount of time he had been passed out or incapable of moving, _lying in a pile of debris as twisted as he was, watching the monster fly overhead. Streaks of glittering light and heat played not far above, visible through the kaleidescopic levels of massive, black metal walkways, any one of which could collapse and impale him with the next crackle of fire that was growing too close._

_ The sound of each time Allen smacked into the walkways played through his head-the sickeningly dull impact, then the metallic reverberation in the grates coming nearer, and then finally the shudder of the supports above his head, resonating the floor underneath him. It was followed by the ghostly laugh of the akuma; the acute, cold lack of his own Innocence; and a span of time in which Allen would lie like the dead, a silhouetted heap that he prayed would move.-_

The sound played over, and over, and over, to as many under-exposed images as he could remember of Allen's forsaken form smashing into the floor, the walls, the railings, the support collumnade. _Repeated, to the feeling of watching an akuma slice him open, knowing it would be fatal soon, and yet feeling nothing in his own body but to know that he would be next._

Komui had cleared his throat and shifted; Lavi was still beside him, gaping at the giant red river down Allen's front. The room seemed silent and small at first, and then the sound of saws started filtering in again. The thing in front of him didn't really look like Allen.

"_Wow_," he whispered slowly, automatically, in his home tongue. "Son of a bitch."

Next to him, Lavi nodded, his dead stare unchanging. ". . . _Scar_. . . ."

There was a long silence between the two of them, in which the doctors conferred and the sensory information was dimmed. After a while, Kanda swore further, the words coming out on their own.

Not that Allen would care if he had _another_ giant scar. Allen had enough already, and he hated them all. It was sort of fun to watch the flowers wilt when people talked about them and Allen heard it. Not fun for Allen, Kanda did understand this, but it varied up life a little bit. And surely, that was a good for both of them.

He wondered, suddenly, if he'd even get to see Allen's face turn red in anger, in embarrassment, in pain, or _anything_, again.

At the far end of the table, Link was still taking in the conversation from under his hands, and behind him, Komui took a moment from one of the surgeon's explanations to run his hand over Allen's head. It was a strangely gentle movement.

Komui's fingertips skirted over a line of stitches he found in Allen's hairline. They hadn't had time to cut the hair back, it seemed, and it was caked in red, stuck to itself and the skin as well as Komui worked around parting it.

And then, as he pulled back his hand, there were hairs coming with it.

Komui stared at his hand, bloodied once-white strands and all.

"Son of a _bitch_," Kanda muttered. Lavi, beside him, paled dramatically.

The supervisor was stunned into thinking, as per normal, and it was going to take a while to get him out of it. Kanda thought he saw Link giving him the eye for it, but the blond shrugged slightly and went back to staring morosely at the wound nearest him.

If Allen died, he was going to get his ass kicked . . . and for just a second, Kanda almost smiled.

Though . . . Kanda turned his eyes to the ruined chest. It was no worse than wounds he had suffered before, but, seeing it on "first-timers" was not something he was used to. He ignored the jolt in his stomach, looking for the lotus that was probably supposed to indicate Allen's life force. It was sitting just above his heart, as it usually did. There were others stacked about the table, but only a few. The number of lives dependent on Allen's survival at this moment, he could count on one hand.

In this case, simple was so much, much better.

As Kanda stared, no one in particular payed attention to him or Lavi; one of the doctors gestured in his speech to Komui, and his hand swept right through one of the flowers, none the wiser. The flower itself, as always to anyone but him, was unperturbed.

"Are those cigarette burns?" Lavi asked, suddenly, tipping his head just a bit. The movement caught Kanda's attention, and he followed the line of the redhead's gaze. All along Allen's hip and disappearing into the swollen flesh that was too discolored to see through were small, round burn scars, pale with time, several of them cut through by other scars that looked suspiciously like fingernails.

Kanda grunted in answer, shrugging. Allen's Life Lotus was not going to give him an answer as to his survival, and the shining flower was still being a frustrating thing. Even now it taunted him: the thing that bothered him about it was that it was strangely closed. Like a bud, not quite alive and not quite a dead one, either; no matter what time of day, what sort of circumstance, Allen's particular life flower was closed off. It never lost a single petal as far as he could tell. And that, which he could not understand, annoyed him the most of all.

And even now, it sat there, furled and unassuming.

"Yuu. . . ?" Lavi's hushed voice cut through his reverie.

Kanda didn't bother changing what he was staring at, just tried to tune out the flowers a little bit more.

"That was good fighting back there," he offered. Lavi was almost ready to accept it as a compliment until the icy stab: "So why are you here right now?"

Lavi shut his mouth and nodded, once, and then again, before answering. "He told me to come down here." Meaning Bookman. "To see what becomes of the kid."

Kanda nodded. There was always this blue lotus that bloomed by Lavi's patched eye when he lied, or half-lied, gently pressed into his vivacious hair as if someone had tucked it behind his ear. Today was no exception, and Kanda felt that he should have been able to find some comfort in that. But he never did.

"Ah." he agreed, and then went back to staring at the table flanked by the many labcoats.

Ah, those memories that wouldn't leave him alone. They were flooding again. . . .

". . . And so, that's why you want Miranda here?" Komui asked the men around, slowly. The woman was still staring in shock, and at the other end of the table. Ah, so Kanda and Lavi had come-

-and were looking for all the world like they weren't there. Great.

He had half a mind to shoo them away like the unfortunate children they were until the Inspector belayed him.

"No," answered Link, from the bench space beside Miranda. He had his face buried in his steepled hands, but when he made an effort to speak, he actually had the decency to try to face him straight. He had probably seen Kanda the moment he came, and that was probably a portion of the scowl on his face.

"We've done everything we can to help him for now, and we would like to transfer him. But because of the ribs, and the fact that he's currently held together with _string_, we have no way to move him." Link rubbed the bridge of his nose at that admission, as if he couldn't get over the sheer level of debacle.

"He'll freeze to death if we leave him on the table like this," added the doctor. "Eventually."

"And so what do you suggest . . . ?" Komui asked. For some reason, his mind could not piece together how Miranda tied into this. Not in any practical fashion, anyway.

"We were thinking," Link offered between heavy breaths, "if Miranda could use her Time Record. To . . . assist us in the matter." He spoke with grumbled but civil tones. Komui was rather surprised he was putting up with any of this, and it made his mind start turning on things he hadn't thought of in a while.

Link sighed and started rubbing under his eyes. "Using Time Recovery might be too hard on his heart when the wounds return, and we're not sure if the stitches will come with it, as they're not technically part of his body. . . ." He gave Miranda a questioning look, to which she bit her lip. "But if she could use the Time Out, we would at least be able to transport him without fear of him dying on the way." He shrugged, actually _shrugged_, he was so exhausted. "Nothing's going to keep him alive but his own power, but at least we could not work against that. Either way, it needs your authorization."

Komui frowned. "And why would that need _my _authorization? Save everyone you can."

The inspector returned him an incredulous stare. "None of us are exorcists. We can't make that decision."

The blond looked to Miranda, and, he must have been having a nightmare, because Komui saw a moment of kindness there. "You are a precious resource," he said, softly. "Will you help him?"

The woman, by all accounts, appeared horrified. She turned to Komui, then Link, and then Allen, and then to all the rest assembled. And when she got to Kanda, she stopped, suddenly realizing he was there.

There must have been something especially vicious-looking about his expression, because when Kanda tipped his head at her, she practically yelped.

"Of-Of course I can help him! I'll do anything for him. But. . . ." She turned down to him, his naked collarbone, and then looked away quickly, reddening. For some reason, this visibly aggravated Kanda where nothing else had. "He's . . . still alive, right?" Miranda asked.

"He's breathing," Link noted, looking at Allen's chest. He frowned. "Though it's hard to tell."

"Well, then, it's settled," Komui said, harsher than he-and everyone else, apparently, given the way they flinched-was suspecting. "We are not going to lose any more exorcists today. Do whatever you have to towards these ends."

". . . 'More'?" Kanda asked suddenly, from the other side of the cluster of bodies. All attention was turned on him, and it was as if he had grown another head. The explosion in number of flowers from that attention was so overpowering that he nearly swore and shaded his eyes; his frown certainly deepened in a way that made him no friends.

"Someone's died?" Link clarified, genuinely concerned.

For a moment, there was a very awkward silence, and a cold feeling trickled down the back of Komui's spine as he had to actually take the seconds to count who he knew to still be among the living. That was right, the generals were all still kicking, weren't they.

". . . Do you need some sleep," Lavi asked, gently, entirely unhelpfully.

"I was speaking as to the situation of the war," Komui answered stiffly, glaring at each person in turn, and to Link in particular, until there was some sort of understanding dawning across his face. The realization the inspector had, however, was not one Komui wished he had the opportunity to see about _himself._

"Have you found Lenalee yet," Lavi piped up again, his red eyebrows turning down in a much deeper fashion than need be, like he too was having trouble thinking.

". . . No," the supervisor answered, lowly.

Lavi nodded, and then looked to Kanda. Who seemed, by all assessments, completely vacant. "_Yuu_?" he asked softly, nudging him in the arm.

"It's better that Lenalee's not here," Kanda grumbled, almost snapped. The doctors near him all turned, and Lavi frowned. Kanda glared at Allen quickly; then at Link, posed on the table with his head in his hand like a frustrated doctor; at the near-crying woman standing next to him and behind her, his training partner who was in silence schooling a downtrodden expression; at Komui, arguing with a doctor; and he didn't bother with the other wall of previously-white coats and unknown soldiers milling about looking on; nor with Lavi, who was, as always, useless and utterly predictable. Kanda shrugged off Lavi's hand and spun on his heel. "Leave the wake until after the damn funeral, would you? Let me know when he's just a pile of ash in an urn. Then I'll try to care."

"If you're going to leave, Kanda," Komui's voice cut through, without any honorific and decidedly sharper than normal, "Go find Lenalee, would you?"

Kanda jerked to a stop, made absolutely no motion for a second, then ticked his shoulder with a scoff and kept walking.

Lavi watched after him, hoping he wouldn't have to make a certain record after he found her. And Kanda understood this, without seeing the look on his face, without the loti of Lavi's aura opening slightly wider from the sincere energy Kanda didn't need the flowers to know was there.

As he left, Lavi took a few haggard breaths and shook out his head, returning to the measure at hand. Well, if he fainted, there were plenty of people around who could help him. Which was more than he could say for Allen.

Komui gave the white-haired boy one last smooth over the head, and everyone else backed away from the table to give Miranda room. Lavi sighed, and tried not to breathe too hard. As Miranda's Time Record grew to life, Marie distressingly close to her, Komui hung back for only a moment before he left. Link, the doctors, and two remaining soldiers stayed on the other side of the table from where Lavi was, and in the space between them, Lavi was reminded again that this was not his life he was seeing.

But when a heavy Timcampy sunk down into his shoulder, pushing into his neck for solace, he could not deny that this was the one he wanted.

* * *

Lenalee's loti were white, like Kanda's own. It wouldn't be too hard to track her down by going to the last place she was known to be and then following the trail, assuming it hadn't been too long. It was possible, as she was spent and had lost pints of blood to the Innocence, that there wasn't far that she would have been able to go. If someone moved her, there were only so many places that that would have been, plus _someone _would have known. But still? No one had found her?

Even after all that her Innocence had done, all the chances that she was the heart, no one stayed to look after her?

Kanda walked along the shaded corridor outside the dining hall, past people still moving bodies and bodies that were still missing pieces. Sticky blood was yet caked to the floors; there were a few people trying to end that at last, but far too few of them. Everyone that was standing was from the Asian Branch; maybe that morphine (and opium) had arrived by now.

Though, if you wanted opium, you went to the British, like out in town, not that they were going to be seeing _that_ place in a _long _time.

Kanda came to the last place he had seen Lenalee and found a small circle of white loti of all sizes waiting pleasantly on the floor, near the sand. So they had just left it there, Tapp's remains, because they didn't know what to do with it.

Kanda stared at it for a while, silent. It could be poisonous, it could be. He had never really encountered the skulls before. At least not . . . dead ones.

. . . That he had known in life, anyway.

And yet, they too returned to dust.

He hadn't known how they were created. He really rather wished he hadn't needed a reason to know. Though . . . knowing the Earl, why was he surprised it came from harvesting humans somehow?

And yet, he was. And disappointed.

He sighed, and tipped his head at the fairy ring of loti as someone walked by, nothing more than boots at the edge of his vision. They did not stop, they did not care; they were looking for someone or something, and - that was right, he was looking for someone, too.

Lenalee's flowers were always tipped a little sharper than some other variants; they also came in all sizes, which wasn't true for everyone. Occasionally, she'd have budded ones in the bouquet around her aura, as well, which had always fascinated him when he was young. He hadn't understood, at the time, what that was for, and she was the first person like that he'd met.

He kicked a few pink flowers out of the way and bent down to survey the ones he cared about. Anyone who saw him would think he was grieving or something ridiculous like that, but the less the enemy knew about you, the better in the end. It didn't matter, he repeated to himself, as his fingers skirted over the ground.

What mattered was the white flowers, stretching down the dark hall like lanterns on the water. A trail so easy to follow it triggered warnings.

The hallway was dark and tiny down the way. The flowers lead to a side hallway, which she'd have no reason to be in. At the dead end of the short side-way, there was a closed door, against which several loti were trapped. Kanda thought he smelled them, the scent of flowers, as he traced his fingertips down the metal fastenings to the doorknob. It was all in his mind, but it was there all the same.

Slowly, Kanda put his body against the door and popped the latch. The room inside was dark, and he let the door swing open on its own. Revealed was a small chamber, a bed, and a bunch of strange things around the walls and floor. Masks, chains, and hiddeous paintings. Kanda stared at the macabre trappings; it was following the long line of a set of hand shackles that brought him to consider the bed-and the shape within it. A shape that was, most decidedly, Lenalee.

He'd never been in this room before, why the hell was there a bed in it? A storage room of one of the deranged scientists? By the cafeteria? But there was only one bed. It wouldn't be just for storage of hatchets and creepy masks...?

Or maybe...it was some secret collapse-room for the kitchen staff that was supposed to be for contraband, who knew? The axe on the wall didn't endear it, and he certainly didn't want the girl there any longer than absolutely necessary.

Now that he was here, it was definitely time to leave.

Kanda checked back once and entered the room. Lenalee was lying on the bed clutching the pillow, in a way that left nothing to the imagination. She had wandered off to cry in the first place she could find where no one would see.

Kanda brushed the fallen hair away from her face. She was still warm, . . . but there was no sign that she felt the touch. He pressed the back of his fingers a little harder into her cheek, and then placed his whole palm on the crown of her head. The locks were glossy, soft, punctuated by the bump of the bandages and crust of blood. It was too dark in the setting sunlight to figure out anything else, so he didn't try, not that he really could tell.

She was . . . fragile. He knew acutely his own workings; had felt so many times the moment of death onsetting that he had memorized it, knew what it felt like when he could get a few more swings out of shattered arms the curse was keeping together before he'd spit out blood and his heart would rupture.

But other people, he would never fully understand their fragility. Only that they broke, and they didn't get back up. He couldn't remember what it was like to be like that.

They became piles of ash, and he did not.

Kanda let his hand slide down her short, tangled hair. How much longer would it continue, that he would lose the scars that they had to try to hide, that he would be the one without proof that he had lived, breathed, and experienced just as much as they had?

He bent down, sliding his arms under her knees and neck. Her scent mingled with dust, sweat, akuma ash, blood, and a little bit of a male body from the bed. The years of the Order, coming out through the cracks the moment you let your guard down.

_ There is going to be a day where I am not the one standing aside, watching all the rest of you grieve. But if it will be before the moment in which I die for good, I have no idea._

He lifted to his feet with a sigh, and even though his mind told him that he should be burned, should be broken in fifteen places whose ghost pain for a moment struck him, he held Lenalee up and it was like lifting a child: no weight at all but the burden of responsibility.

Kanda cradled her close, and left the darkness behind.

* * *

He returned to the hallway, cloaked in layers of black so deep not even the flowers helped him. They were grey in the dark, the last vestiges of light disappearing out of the sole window behind him. It was night, but there would be no peaceful sleep.

_ I suppose, _he thought as he shifted the weight a little, feeling the silk of her nightgown slip against his fingers and wondering what his heartbeat sounded like in her dreams, _I should help with the living._

A lotus had appeared on Lenalee's chest at some point, cradled against the protective shell of his stomach like she was. It lay there, the most innocuous and pretty thing in the world.

_ . . . She would want me to see the flowers._

* * *

Kanda's emergence into the main lobby was not one he would have thought much of. It was dark, he was draped in and emerged from slicing shadows as he walked. Lenalee was in his arms. There was no thought in his mind about how this would affect Komui, who was just stepping out of the double doors; nor of how Miranda would take it, who came just after the supervisor; nor of the doctors, Marie, and that prick inspector who were delivering Allen upstairs to the hospital wing. Not that he could see anything beyond Allen's pale arm and a tuft of white hair on the litter anyway, with the amount of people in the way and the loti draping off his snowy form like a soundless waterfall.

Komui turned and, like a sixth-sense, stared straight at him; the idiot Centralite Link even stopped for a second, looking between all the parties involved. For that moment, there were a few people across the massive expanse for whom time stopped, and in the background, the funeral procession continued on like it should-without acknowledging anyone's existence.

There was no point in him even being there. This was for _her,_ the one that made the warmth in his arms.

For a moment, Kanda cradled his bundle closer, a reflex from times long gone.

Komui rushed for him, just as Kanda spotted a flash of green in the gray hues by the cafeteria door.

"Lenalee!" This was not Komui the raving lunatic but Komui the brother, scared into remembering he was mortal. There was a look on his face that Kanda tried not see.

"Kanda, what's wrong with her?"

Strangely, Kanda found himself snorting at his leader. Not that he hadn't done it before, but never when Komui was bent over enough to shadow him, clutching at his shoulder like a drowning man.

"How should I know?" he answered, because he simply didn't. His lips felt numb, even as he said it. "I found her like you said, though."

"Is she breathing? Lenalee, Lenalee-"

Komui's hand came around the side of her face, and in the process of trying to rouse her, he had to bend down far enough that he was under the height of Kanda's head. At first, he wondered why he couldn't just put the girl down, but in a split-second, Kanda realized something:

There were no loti.

Just Komui, Lenalee, and him, not exactly a family because the two were in fact Chinese, but the closest thing to that he was ever going to get to that again. A feeling stirred in him, warmth in his chest beyond just the heat of his body and Lenalee's, something that had nothing to do with the tattoo, the Innocence. It was a feeling he had tried very hard not to have for the last ten years, and he did not like it. Did not like it suddenly intruding on his life like this-

"Anything I can do to help?" Lavi's voice suddenly piped up, the redhead appearing around the other side of Komui's shoulder. "Yuu, where did you find her?"

Kanda scowled, and Komui ignored them both, going for a pen light he had stashed in his pocket.

"Here, hold this," he said to Lavi, handing him the clipboard.

Kanda considered completely ignoring the devil-head for the hell of it, for bursting his little lotus-free bubble of pleasant thoughts, but the look on Lavi's face stopped him. Really looking at him, he indentified something troubling there, another something he did not like one bit:

Grief.

And . . . flowers, flowers everywhere, rapidly dropping petals.

Kanda blinked, and he must have flinched, because finally both of them were looking at him.

"_Lavi_," Kanda said, eyes wide. "Lavi, you're . . . you're. . . ."

"Spit it out, you," he grumbled, and he did not say "Yuu" but "you." A slightly different accent, a slightly different speech pattern.

"Lavi," Komui demanded suddenly, grabbing him by the back of the neck and shining the light in his eye.

"Ah! Ah, sonuva-wha's this for?"

"Lavi, you're bleeding," Komui said, clicking off the light and watching as Lavi, predictably, objected and went for his head wound.

"Not there," Komui said, shaking his head slowly. "Can't you feel that?"

"Feel wha?" the red-head asked, backing up slightly, wincing the entire way. He wiped the trail of blood from his nose, without seeming to recognize that it was there. "Ihv fine, Komui, what's all this, guyss?"

"Come with me, right now," Komui demanded, getting his hand under Lavi's arm and propping him up on his shoulder.

"Ah! Ah, ribs ribs _ribs_," he gasped, buckling immediately. He hit the ground hard on his knees, gritting his teeth and coughing out swears that didn't quite manifest as he folded against Komui's arm.

"What the hell was _that _for?" he whined, or at least thought he did, because the next thing he knew, the light was shining in his eye again, flashing back and forth. It was stupidly bright, stupid thing. . . .

"_Kanda_," Komui growled from the ground, "Put Lenalee down and go get me ice. Lots of it, enough for both of them, something to put it in, and you!" He pointed at one of the guards, a second bystander in the hall behind him, and a golem. "Find me a surgeon that knows how to use an ice pick and a knife to cut into heads. Do it!"

The two men, after a second of looking to each other, ran per the instructions. But Kanda did not move. He just stared somewhere near Lavi's head, stark still.

"Kanda!" Komui barked, coming to his feet and scooping Lenalee out of his arms. "Stop seeing things and _go_!"

The fleeing weight snapped him out of it, someone taking his prize and his warmth. By the time Komui had settled Lenalee on the ground, Kanda was shaking his head and had run his hand over his face several times.

_ "Right, freezer_," he muttered in Japanese, shifting away. He was shaking, when he broke into a run.

Komui spared him as much of a sad look as he could, as he went back to Lavi, to Lenalee, alternately ministering what he could. "Jesus, Lavi, Bookman'll _kill _me if you die," he whispered, "and from a damn brain injury, God _damn _it. Lenalee, Lenalee honey, wake up," he added, going for her pulse as he snapped the fingers of his other hand in front of Lavi's face. "Stay with me, Lavi, the longer you're in there the better it'll be. . . ."

_ What is this, Komui?_ Lavi wondered. He was not registering what he saw before him; more or less, everything was either lights or blackness, steadily becoming the latter. _I don't think I can remember this, the old man's gonna kill me._

_ What am I seeing, anyway? This can't be anything good. . . ._

_ I don't think I can breathe. Oh, this isn't good. . . . Komui, you still out there somewhere?  
_

_Komui?_

_ . . . Anyone?_

_ Are you there?_

_

* * *

_

Komui recognized Kanda's return first by the sound of racing steps. He skidded into view, landing on his knees before he arrived. He planted one foot when he reached Lavi's head, and spun around to face the Komui, situated in between his comrades' heads.

"_Here_," he breathed, setting down two large buckets of ice and several dish towels on top of them. "What do you want me to do?"

Komui grabbed one of the towels and began filling it with the broken shards. "Pack ice around their heads, especially Lavi."

Kanda mirrored him, making a cacoon of cold for the youth as Komui did for his sister. The ice, he noticed, would have had to have come from Jerry, and he did not want to think about what that conversation had been like.

They put more around Lavi, and when Komui sat back on his heels to match Kanda, the Japanese was left holding the edges of the cool, lumpy ice around Lenalee's head, letting it burn off into his fingers until they shook.

"And now what?" he asked, breathing hard. He looked to Lavi and double-took when he realized that his eyes weren't open.

Kanda swore, and Komui took a breath.

"Well . . . ," the elder sighed, and Kanda looked up to find his answer. For just a moment, his eyes flashed wider, and he was staring long enough that he was sure Komui noticed.

The man sat in the middle of his field of vision, Lenalee and Lavi's bodies spread out between them, and the rest of the Order spread behind _them_, people still running here and there. Others, slumped against the walls, completely unaware of what was going on around them. Two exorcists could die right here and the rest of the world wouldn't even notice.

And everywhere, were loti, glowing in the cavernous blackness.

"We hope they wake up," Komui answered, a blank canvas through the haze. "And pray."

". . . What?" Kanda found himself asking. There were so many flowers, he wondered if the sound really got to the man. If the sound, the view, any of it, would ever get to him, or if he would just be swallowed up like everyone else.

"We hope they wake up or else Lavi gets a pick to the head," Komui said, with a completely straight, if slightly shocked, face.

"So we just sit here. . . . And wait for them to die?" Kanda wondered, in an equally dull voice. His gaze fell, to search the two faces on either side of his knees.

He was fine . . . a minute ago.

But that was the way normal humans were, wasn't it? The way it would be when he, too, finally, _finally _died. He would be there, and then he would be gone.

Kanda closed his eyes, letting himself sink into their darkness.

And it would feel good.

Komui sighed and rubbed the side of his head. It was quiet, no screams in the night, no sound of raging fires or blaring alarms. Just this lobby of the home he was supposed to be protecting, the guards standing around him, two of the children that were his to watch over laid vapid at his knees, and Kanda, sitting like the statue he always was.

"_Why_."

Komui's brow ticked down, as his ears processed the sound. He looked up, not believing what was before his eyes. "_Why is it always like this?"_

Kanda was staring at his fisted hands, staunchly refusing to acknowledge the twin lines of tears steadily dripping down his face whenever he blinked, made black by the ash caked on him. "I don't deserve this," he sucked back a sob, and shook his bowed head. "...To be the one left alive. Who decided that fate for me, over and over!"

His hands came up and just as natural as anything, wiped at the eyes Komui could no longer see. "Can't the world just . . ." He shook his head, in and out of sobs. "_Just_. . . ."

Komui stared at Kanda, and very slowly, found his own hand clasping around Lenalee's as he did so. There wasn't anything he could say to him, that wouldn't dig the wound deeper. Kanda didn't want him. He wanted to be alone, utterly and completely.

"Yuu..."

_ Does the world look different when you let it see you cry?_

"Supervisor, Sir." Komui jerked his head up to find two men in rusty-red splotted lab coats behind him, the nearest with a particular set of sharpened tools in hand. "Someone needs some pressure relieved?" It would have been a joke, any other day. The doctor even forgot to smile, this time.

The tools in his hand happened to be at Komui's eye level, and he couldn't stop looking at them. They were not pleasant. But they were clean.

"Ah . . . t-that's what we need to find out," he offered, beckoning them down. "This one may have passed out some time ago, but I'm less sure about her case. Lavi, he just lost responsiveness, I saw the hits he took and I'm sure there's hemorrhaging going on, as you can see from the bleeds, but we thought he was all right before this. . . . Though I shouldn't have, the signs were all there. . . ." Komui chanced a glance at Kanda as the doctors found places to kneel between them. "Kanda," he whispered, leaning a hand on his knee. "What do you see?"

The youth sighed suddenly, and even though the water kept falling out of his eyes when he blinked, there was no other emotional response. He didn't seem to notice it.

"Nothing we can do anything about," he said, blankly. One lotus near his leg looked particularly pathetic, so he flicked one petal to send it spinning. It was about all he could do: sit, and watch the flowers grow, bloom, and wither.

"All right, excuse me, Kanda Sir," said one of the doctors, a Brit by the sound of it.

Kanda merely nodded and scooted off to the side, sitting with his back against the wall and his obsidian hair getting in the way of everything. The doctors went about their business and Komui only gave him fleeting glances now and then, that he was at the same time both annoyed and glad for.

Kanda sighed and pulled over a couple of loti, one from Lenalee and one from Lavi. He put them in his lap, along with a small one that had appeared to his other side, down the direction he and Lenalee had come from. It was a flower from his own aura, delicate and unbreakable so long as he was alive. Together, the three, fully-blooming, took up his abdomen, and he sat, slowly stroking the tips of the petals as he tuned out the doctors.

The buds were secrets. Parts of their emotion they hid, and would never entrust to another person, even if asked.

Kanda had no buds. He'd never had them.

The petals felt real, to his hands.

How long would it be before they too turned to ash, falling through his fingers?

"Tell me if you need any blood," he said, as the blooms drifted into the dancing shadows.

* * *

A/N: Did you like the PSTD? I tried hard to make it as confusing as it is for them. I'm looking forward to your reviews: I want to know what you think. :)

Beta'd kindly and enthusiastically by Hoenheim-of-Light-51. I like this having-a-beta thing. :D

Last edit: 8/2/10


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